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SIDE-LIGHTS  ON  AMERICAN 
LITERATURE 


SIDE-LIGHTS  ON 
AMERICAN   LITERATURE 


BY 
FRED  LEWIS  PATTEE 


NEW  YORK 

THE  CENTURY  CO. 

1922 


Copyright,   1922,  by 
THE  CENTUBY  Co. 


PBINTBD  IN   U.    0.   A. 


TO 

WILLIAM  AVEBSTER  ELLSWORTH 

Lover  of  good  books,  loyal  friend,  and 

generous  Maecenas  to  many  struggling  authors, 

this  book  is  affectionately  dedicated 


50 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  AGE  OF  O.  HENRY 3 

A  CRITIC  IN  C  MAJOR 56 

THE  PROPHET  OF  THE  LAST  FRONTIER     ...     98 
THE  EPIC  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 161 

ON  THE  TERMINAL  MORAINE  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

PURITANISM 175 

THE  SHADOW  OF  LONGFELLOW 210 

THE  MODERNNESS  OF  PHILIP  FRENEAU   .      .      .  250 

THE  CENTENARY  OF  BRYANT'S  POETRY   .      .      .  293 

POE'S  "ULALUME" 327 


SIDE-LIGHTS  ON  AMERICAN 
LITERATURE 


SIDE-LIGHTS  ON  AMERICAN 
LITERATURE 

THE  AGE  OF  O.  HENRY 

i 

THE  apparition  of  O.  Henry  is  the  most  extraor 
dinary  literary  phenomenon  of  the  new  century. 
He  and  Jack  London  emerged  almost  at  the  same 
moment,  unheralded,  full-grown,  sudden :  few  ar 
rivals  in  all  literature  have  been  so  startling. 
Hardly  had  we  learned  his  real  name  before  he  was 
rilling  the  whole  sky.  He  was  William  Sydney 
Porter,  we  were  told,  a  native  of  North  Carolina 
who  had  had  wild  experiences  as  a  cow-boy  on  the 
ranches  of  the  Southwest.  He  had  been  adventurer, 
we  gathered,  tramp,  knight-errant  of  the  chaparral 
in  the  roughest  areas  of  that  wildest  West  so  swiftly 
passing  into  tradition,  and  now  he  had  sent  East 
stirring  tales  of  adventure:  another  Bret  Harte,  up 
to  date,  breezy,  original.  And  his  earliest  specimens 
in  the  magazines  seemed  to  bear  out  the  report. 
Then  quickly  had  come  a  new  sensation :  this  West 
ern  cow-boy  had  lived  in  New  Orleans,  had  vaga 
bonded  through  Honduras  and  South  America, 
and  he  was  bringing  what  no  one  had  brought  be- 

3 


4      Side-Lights  on  'American  Literature 

fore,  wild  exotic  atmospheres  and  exciting  adven 
ture  from  uncharted  realms  to  the  west  and  the 
south  of  the  Caribbean.  At  once  he  was  hailed  as 
Harte  had  been  hailed  and  as  Kipling,  and  as  quickly 
Jack  London  was  to  be  hailed,  as  a  new  sensation  in 
a  jaded  age. 

That  was  in  1902.  Then  had  come  a  sensation 
as  startling  as  the  first  apparition :  suddenly  we  heard 
that  this  cow-boy,  this  vagabond  from  South  Amer 
ica,  had  become — amazing  metamorphosis ! — the  in 
terpreter  of  New  York  City;  the  Scheherazade  of 
"Bagdad  on  the  Hudson" ;  total  stranger  in  New 
York,  yet  vouched  for  as  doing  for  that  world  of  a 
city  what  had  been  done  for  London  by  Dickens, 
who  had  spent  his  life  there  and  who  knew  nothing 
else.  "McClure's  Magazine"  had  discovered  him;  a 
dozen  other  periodicals  fought  for  his  wares  and 
secured  them  with  loud  trumpetings ;  the  New  York 
"World"  named  a  figure  that  mortgaged  for  months 
his  whole  future  product :  a  story  a  week,  for  its 
Sunday  supplement,  just  as  a  generation  before  "The 
Atlantic  Monthly"  had  purchased  for  a  year  the 
pen  of  Bret  Harte.  Then  at  the  height  of  his 
powers  suddenly  he  vanished :  dead  at  forty-eight. 
He  had  come  like  a  comet;  he  had  filled  the  whole 
sky ;  he  had  disappeared  like  a  comet. 

That  was  in  1910.  But  the  paradox  of  O.  Henry 
had  hardly  begun.  Stories  written  for  the  Sunday 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  5 

supplement  are  as  ephemeral  as  the  comic  section 
which  they  neighbor,  but  these  ephemerae  were  to 
outlast  even  the  classics  of  the  "Atlantic."  Some 
volumes  of  them  were  collected  even  during  the 
headlong  six  years  of  his  productiveness,  but  with 
his  unexpected  death  there  came  a  scramble  to 
secure  every  scrap  of  his  product  for  a  subscription 
set.  He  had  been  enormously  creative.  During  the 
two  years  following  "Cabbages  and  Kings"  he  had 
produced  115  stories,  and  his  total  product,  almost 
all  of  it  the  work  of  six  years,  was  250  pieces, 
not  counting  the  scraps  in  a  thirteenth  volume  of  his 
set. 

And  now  came  the  second  stage  of  O.  Henry, 
O.  Henry  as  a  subscription  set  advertised  with  all 
the  latest  enginery  of  the  art  like  a  soap  or  a 
breakfast-food,  guaranteed  creations  of  a  genuine 
"Yankee  Maupassant,"  books  with  "stories  that  will 
live  as  long  as  speech"  :  "England  has  her  Dickens, 
France  her  Hugo,  and  America  her  O.  Henry." 
When  the  sales  began  to  slacken  a  set  of  Kipling 
was  thrown  in  free,  and  later  still,  after  another  lull, 
a  set  of  E.  Phillips  Oppenheim,  seven  quivering 
volumes,  with  an  offer  of  $500  in  prizes  for  the 
buyers  writing  the  best  letters  descriptive  of  the 
thrills  in  a  "collection  of  thrills  unparalleled  in 
literature."  And  the  public  responded — is  even  yet 
responding — to  a  degree  that  staggers  the  imagina- 


6       Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

tion.  In  1919  his  publishers  announced  that  "Up 
to  the  present  time  about  four  millions,  one  hun 
dred  thousand  of  O.  Henry's  books  have  gone  to 
the  public,"  or  about  one  to  every  twenty-five  of  our 
population.  Since  then  the  market  has  been  more 
difficult  to  follow  and  the  publishers  will  venture 
no  figures,  but  the  sale,  they  declare,  has  gone  steadily 
on  as  from  the  first.  The  conclusion  is  inevitable : 
the  people  would  not  have  bought  these  volumes 
had  they  not  wanted  them,  had  they  not  craved  just 
those  things  the  advertising  sheets  so  vividly  prom 
ised;  the  reading  public  of  America  undeniably 
wants  O.  Henry.  With  such  figures  and  facts  be 
fore  us,  is  it  too  much  to  say  that  the  last  two 
decades  in  America  have  been  the  age  of  O.  Henry, 
and  that  we  are  still  befogged  within  it  and  with 
little  promise  of  emergence? 

O.  Henry  is  paradox;  at  every  point  you  touch 
him,  paradox.  Four  years  after  his  death  the  city 
of  Raleigh,  North  Carolina,  erected  a  memorial 
to  him — to  this  columnist  of  a  Sunday  supplement 
• — and  the  orator  of  the  day  was  the  Poe  professor 
of  English  at  the  University  of  Virginia,  a  scholar 
of  distinction.  Then  with  an  acclaim  that  was  na 
tional  and  international  came  the  O.  Henry  Hotel 
dedication  in  a  Southern  city  and  another  burst  of 
superlatives.  Then  just  as  calm  was  settling  again 
and  it  seemed  to  the  conservative  that  Time  was 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  7 

preparing  her  inevitable  verdict,  there  came  the 
Smith  biography.  Amazing  paradox!  The  man 
never  had  been  a  cow-boy  at  all,  at  least  not  a  rider 
of  horses.  During  his  eleven  years  in  Texas  he 
had  been  for  the  most  of  the  time  a  newspaper  re 
porter  and  a  clerk,  his  last  clerkship  in  a  bank. 
Accused  of  too  great  freedom  with  the  bank  funds, 
he  had  made  a  plunge  into  South  America  by 
way  of  New  Orleans.  For  months  he  had  vaga 
bonded  "with  Momus  beneath  the  tropic  stars  where 
Melpomene  once  stalked  austere/'  but  returning  at 
last  to  Texas  he  had  been  arrested,  convicted  of  em 
bezzlement,  and  condemned  to  prison,  where  he  had 
spent  four  years.  It  was  in  prison  that  he  had  taken 
to  writing,  and  from  his  cell,  with  an  assumed 
name  necessarily  (for  was  he  not  a  convict?),  had 
actually  marketed  those  stories  which  first  had 
brought  him  into  notice.  When  "Whistling  Dick's 
Christmas  Stocking"  appeared  in  "McClure's,"  its 
author  had  two  and  a  half  more  years  to  serve  on 
his  prison  sentence.  Sensational,  surely!  The  au 
thor  of  the  biography  was  stormed  with  abuse  be 
cause  he  had  refused  to  conceal  the  truth.  De 
licious  irony !  The  public  should  not  know  too  much 
about  its  idols.  The  South  is  chivalrous:  de  mor- 
tuis  nil  nisi  bonum;  the  good  fellows  who  had 
helped  shorten  his  days  were  chivalrous;  he  was  a 
good  fellow;  he  was  dead,  therefore  he  should  be 


8      Side-Lights  on  'American  Literature 

canonized.  Concerning  the  quality  of  his  work, 
all  this  made  no  difference  either  way,  but  it  is 
interesting. 

That  was  in  1916.  Could  these  fastidious  critics 
North  and  South,  have  seen  1921  and  its  'Through 
the  Shadows  with  O.  Henry"  with  its  prison  cover- 
design,  its  jacket  puff  of  "an  amazing  revelation, 
with  a  thrill  in  every  chapter,"  and  its  author,  Al 
Jennings,  reformed  desperado  and  convict  described 
by  O.  Henry  himself  as  "pickpocket,  supper  man, 
second-story  man,  yeggman,  box  man,  all-round 
burglar,  card-sharp  and  slickest  con  man  west  of  the 
Twenty-third  Street  ferry  landing,"  and,  he  might 
have  added,  murderer  and  gun-man  and  thug  and 
boon  companion  during  the  South  American  experi 
ence,  and  general  model  for  the  desperadoes  and  bad 
men  of  most  of  his  picaresque  stories  of  the  South 
west  and  of  South  America — had  this  revelation 
appeared  in  1916  what  would  have  been  the  sensa 
tion?  American  literature  of  late  is  becoming  pic 
turesque  in  its  personalities. 

So  much  for  the  paradox  of  O.  Henry  himself: 
what  of  the  250  tales  in  the  twelve  volumes  of  his 
literary  remains? 

Conservative  criticism  has  been  inclined  to  with 
hold  its  verdict  and  wait.  A  comet,  be  it  ever  so 
brilliant,  fades  if  you  give  it  time,  but  in  the  case 
of  O.  Henry  the  critic  has  not  been  allowed  to 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  9 

wait.  He  has  been  forced  to  render  judgment.  It 
has  become  impossible  to  ignore  the  voices  that  have 
poured  upon  him  from  barber-shop  and  university, 
from  home  and  public  library,  from  club  and  pulpit, 
from  reviews  in  popular  journals  and  critiques  in 
quarterlies  and  solemn  volumes.  And  the  volume 
of  praise  seems  to  be  increasing.  Editors  of  col 
lege  texts  have  admitted  him  among  the  time-tried 
classics.  A  recent  book  of  selections  from  "the 
world's  greatest  short  story  writers/'  made  by  a 
sober  critic,  includes  five  Americans :  Irving,  Haw 
thorne,  Poe,  Bunner,  O.  Henry.  Dr.  C.  Alphonso 
Smith,  the  breadth  of  whose  scholarship  no  one 
questions,  sent  forth  rfis  biography  with  the  dictum : 
"O.  Henry's  work  remains  the  most  solid  fact  to 
be  reckoned  with  in  the  history  of  twentieth  century 
literature."  This  same  critic  at  the  dedication  of  the 
Raleigh  memorial  had  added  the  man  to  the  great 
American  four :  Irving,  Hawthorne,  Poe,  and 
Harte.  "O.  Henry,"  he  declared,  "has  given  the 
American  short  story  a  new  reach  and  a  widened 
social  content  ...  he  has  socialized  the  short  story." 
The  Canadian  humorist  and  critic,  Stephen  Leacock, 
has  published  an  essay  entitled  "The  Amazing  Genius 
of  O.  Henry,"  and  in  it  he  has  dared  to  use  words 
like  these:  "The  time  is  coming,  let  us  hope, 
when  the  whole  English-speaking  world  will  recog 
nize  in  him  one  of  the  great  masters  of  modern 


10     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

literature."  Some  of  the  most  discriminating  of 
scholars  both  in  America  and  abroad  have  found 
joy  in  him :  the  late  William  James,  we  are  told,  had 
read  his  every  story.  University  men  everywhere, 
and  conservative  critics  even,  have  turned  to  him 
for  relaxation  and  have  praised  him  in  superlatives. 
Few  authors,  indeed,  have  ever  so  completely  cap 
tured  the  high  and  the  low  of  their  generation. 

In  view,  then,  of  this  no  uncertain  verdict  of  his 
era,  his  work  becomes  important.  To  study  it  is 
to  study  an  epoch,  for  a  people  and  a  generation  are 
to  be  judged  by  what  they  read  and  enjoy,  by  what 
they  teach  in  their  schools  and  crown  in  their  acade 
mies.  A  success  like  O.  Henry's  means  imitators, 
a  literary  school,  a  standard  of  values.  And  what 
are  these  values  to  be?  What  of  the  age  of  O. 
Henry  ? 


n 


Before  one  may  crown  O.  Henry  or  dismiss  O. 
Henry  one  must  read  him,  all  of  him,  thirteen 
volumes :  it  goes  without  saying.  But  let  the  reader 
keep  his  balance :  the  mixture  is  intoxicating ;  it 
blunts  after  a  time  all  the  critical  faculties.  One 
emerges  from  the  thirteenth  volume  of  this  strange 
harlequin  epic  completely  upset,  unable  for  a  time 
rightly  to  evaluate  anything,  condemning,  yet  at 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  11 

the  same  time  inclined  to  praise — one  hardly  knows 
why  or  what.  Surely  one  has  been  diverted.  Where 
else  in  all  literature  is  there  such  a  melange — 
stories  bedeviled  and  poured  into  bombshells ;  traves 
ties  of  all  things  holy  and  unholy;  sermons  in 
motley  and  the  ten  commandments  of  yeggdom; 
pure  fun  and  again  barbarous  farce  as  vulgarly 
primitive  as  the  comic  supplement ;  short  stories  vio 
lating  every  canon  of  the  text-books,  yet  so  brilliant 
as  to  set  one  forming  a  new  canon  of  the  art; 
sketches  ending  in  xart-wheel  capers,  philosophiz- 
ings  through  a  hofcgp-collar,  burlesques  hilarious. 
Everywhere  everything  too  much.  What  spirits! 
what  abandon!  what  zest  in  life!  what  curiosity! 
what  boyish  delight  in  the  human  show !  One  must 
go  back  to  the  adolescent  Dickens  to  match  it — the 
Dickens  of  the  "Sketches  by  Boz"  and  "Pickwick." 
Not  a  dull  page,  not  a  paragraph  that  does  not  re 
bound  upon  you  like  a  peal  of  laughter,  or  startle 
you,  or  challenge  you,  or  prod  you  unawares,  and 
roar  at  your  surprise.  No  repose  in  these  books: 
they  are  peppered  and  deviled  meat  for  jaded  palates. 
.One  goes  not  to  these  for  delicate  flavors,  or  subtle 
spiceries,  or  refined  and  exaggerated  nuances  of 
style.  The  tones  are  loud,  the  humor  is  grotesque 
and  boisterous,  the  situations  are  extremes,  the  char 
acters  are  as  artificial  and  as  exaggerated  as  those 
of  Dickens.  It  is  pitched,  all  of  it,  for  men,  for 


12     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

healthy  elemental  men:  men  of  the  bar-room  and 
the  club  foyer  and  the  barracks.  In  no  writings 
since  Dickens  does  liquor  flow  so  freely :  "drink  shall 
swell  the  theme  and  be  set  forth  in  abundance/' 
shrills  "The  Rubaiyat  of  a  Scotch  Highball."  "The 
Fourth  In  Salvador"  is  the  most  besotted  tale 
in  all  literature.  And  yet  for  all  that,  and  not 
withstanding  the  fact  that  the  stories  many  of  them 
record  life  on  isolated  masculine  ranches,  in  vice- 
reeking  tropic  towns,  and  in  unspeakable  areas  of 
New  York  City,  at  every  point  that  touches  the 
feminine — paradox  again! — the  work  is  as  chaste 
as  Emerson. 

Before  one  has  spent  an  hour  with  the  books  one 
is  aware  of  a  strange  duality  about  them,  one 
that  must  have  had  its  origin  in  the  man  himself. 
It  is  as  if  a  Hawthorne  had  sold  his  pen  to  Momus. 
There  are  pages  where  the  style  attains  a  distinc 
tion  that  is  rare  indeed.  One  might  cull  extracts 
that  would  imply  marvelous  wholes.  We  realize 
before  we  have  finished  a  single  tale  that  we  are 
dealing  with  no  uncouth  ranchman  who  has  literary 
aspirations,  who  writes  in  slang  because  slang  is  the 
only  language  he  knows.  We  are  in  the  hands, 
we  feel,  of  one  who  has  read  widely  and  well; 
his  quotations  and  allusions  cover  an  area  that  is 
surprising.  His  vocabulary  also  is  extraordinary, 
and  I  do  not  refer  to  the  a-mazing  nature  of  his 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  13 

slang.  He  is  as  accurate  in  his  choice  of  words  and 
as  rich  in  his  variants  as  a  professional  stylist  like 
James.  His  biographer  records  that  for  years  the 
dictionary  was  his  favorite  reading,  that  he  pored 
over  it  as  one  pores  over  romance ;  and  the  reader  of 
his  stories  may  well  believe  it.  One  professor  of 
literature  has  confessed  that  he  is  drawn  to  O. 
Henry  simply  because  of  his  vocabulary,  because 
of  the  exquisite  ability*  he  has  to  capture  the  one 
fleeting  word  of  all  fleeting  words  for  his  purpose. 
Take  a  paragraph  like  this,  a  paragraph  as  piquant 
and  as  uniquely  individual  in  style  as  if  it  were 
penned  by  Charles  Lamb: 

In  the  restaurant  of  El  Refugio  are  served  com 
pounds  delightful  to  the  palate  of  the  man  from  Capri 
corn  or  Cancer.  Altruism  must  halt  the  story  thus 
long.  Oh,  diner,  weary  of  the  culinary  subterfuges 
of  the  Gallic  chef,  hie  thee  to  El  Refugio!  There 
only  will  you  find  a  fish — bluefish,  shad  or  pompano 
from  the  Gulf — baked  after  the  Spanish  method. 
Tomatoes  give  it  color,  individuality  and  soul;  chili 
Colorado  bestows  upon  it  zest,  originality  and  fervor; 
unknown  herbs  furnish  piquancy  and  mystery,  and — 
but  its  crowning  glory  deserves  a  new  sentence. 
Around  it,  above  it,  beneath  it,  in  its  vicinity — but 
never  in  it — hovers  an  ethereal  aura,  an  effluvium  so 
rarefied  and  delicate  that  only  the  Society  for  Psy 
chical  Research  could  note  its  origin.  Do  not  say 
that  garlic  is  in  the  fish  at  El  Refugio.  It  is  not 


14     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

otherwise  than  as  if  the  spirit  of  Garlic,  flitting  past, 
has  wafted  one  kiss  that  lingers  in  the  parsley- 
crowned  dish  as  haunting  as  those  kisses  in  life,  "by 
hopeless  fancy  feigned  on  lips  that  are  for  others." 
And  then,  when  Conchito,  the  waiter,  brings  you  a 
plate  of  brown  frijoles  and  a  carafe  of  wine  that  has 
never  stood  still  between  Oporto  and  El  Refugio — 
ah,  Dios! 

And  here  is  a  tropical  sunset: 

The  day  -died  in  the  lagoons  and  in  the  shadowed 
banana  groves  and  in  the  mangrove  swamps,  where 
the  great  blue  crabs  were  beginning  to  crawl  to  land 
for  their  nightly  ramble.  And  it  died,  at  last,  upon 
the  highest  peaks.  Then  the  brief  twilight,  ephemeral 
as  the  flight  of  a  moth,  came  and  went;  the  Southern 
Cross  peeped  with  its  topmost  eye  above  a  row  of 
palms,  and  the  fireflies  heralded  with  their  torches  the 
approach  of  soft-footed  night. 

At  times  in  his  earlier  South  American  sketches  he 
caught  the  very  soul  of  the  tropics,  "the  fetterless, 
idyllic  round  of  enchanted  days;  the  life  among 
this  indolent  romantic  people — a  life  full  of  music, 
flowers,  and  low  laughter;  the  influence  of  the  im 
manent  sea  and  mountains,  and  the  many  shapes 
of  love  and  magic  and  beauty  that  bloom  in  the 
white  tropic  nights."  Note  a  sentence  like  this 
describing  the  head-hunters  of  Mindanao: 

Those  grim,  flinty,  relentless  little  men,  never  seen, 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  15 

but  chilling  the  warmest  noonday  by  the  subtle  terror 
of  their  concealed  presence,  parallelling  the  trail  of 
their  prey  through  unmapped  forests,  across  perilous 
mountain-tops,  adown  bottomless  chasms,  into  unin 
habitable  jungles,  always  near  with  the  invisible  hand 
of  death  uplifted,  betraying  their  pursuit  only  by  such 
signs  as  a  beast  or  a  bird  or  a  gliding  serpent  might 
make — a  twig  crackling  in  the  awful  sweat-soaked 
night,  a  drench  of  dew  showering  from  the  screening 
foliage  of  a  giant  tree,  a  whisper  at  even  from  the 
rushes  of  a  water-level — a  hint  of  death  for  every 
mile  and  every  hour — they  amused  me  greatly,  those 
little  fellows  of  one  idea. 

But  one  catches  only  fitful  glimpses  of  this  more 
serious  O.  Henry.  The  Momus  who  ruled  his  pen 
nodded  seldom  more  than  a  moment  at  a  time.  The 
sentence  or  the  paragraph  that  starts  in  serious  tone 
ends  most  often  with  a  sudden  pigeonwing.  Note 
for  instance  the  Emersonian  opening  and  the  harle 
quin  close  of  this  paragraph  from  "Squaring  the 
Circle": 

Nature  moves  in  circles ;  Art  in  straight  lines.  The 
natural  is  rounded ;  the  artificial  is  made  up  of  angles. 
A  man  lost  in  the  snow  wanders,  in  spite  of  himself, 
in  perfect  circles;  the  city  man's  feet,  denaturalized 
by  rectangular  streets  and  floors,  carry  him  ever  away 
from  himself.  The  round  eyes  of  childhood  typify 
innocence ;  the  narrowed  line  of  the  flirt's  optic  proves 
the  invasion  of  art.  The  horizontal  mouth  is  the  mark 


16     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

of  determined  cunning;  who  has  not  read  Nature's 
most  spontaneous  lyric  in  lips  rounded  for  the  candid 
kiss?  Beauty  is  Nature  in  perfection;  circularity  is 
its  chief  attribute.  Behold  the  full  moon,  the  enchant 
ing  golf  ball,  the  domes  of  splendid  temples,  the 
huckleberry  pie,  the  wedding  ring,  the  circus  ring,  the 
ring  for  the  waiter,  and  the  "round"  of  drinks. 

Never  can  we  trust  him.  His  tale  of  Southern 
life,  "The  Guardian  of  the  Accolade,"  beguiles  us. 
It  rings  true ;  it  is  exquisitely  told.  Uncle  Bushrod 
is  as  feelingly  and  convincingly  drawn  as  any  before- 
the-war  negro  in  recent  literature.  The  feeling 
grows  as  we  read  that  we  have  discovered  a  classic : 
at  last  from  O.  Henry  a  work  of  serious  art  with 
no  harlequin  tricks  and  no  vaudeville  capers.  Then 
comes  the  final  sentence.  Ah!  it  is  all  a  trick: 
the  master  was  not  absconding  with  the  bank 
funds  after  all;  the  faithful  old  negro  had  not, 
as  he  so  proudly  supposed,  rescued  the  family  from 
the  gulf  of  dishonor:  all  he  had  done  had  been 
to  prevent  his  master  from  taking  with  him  on  a  fish 
ing  trip  his  favorite  satchel,  and  that  satchel  of  stolen 
bonds,  as  the  negro  supposed  when  he  had  returned 
it  with  such  care  to  the  bank — "there  was  two  quarts 
of  the  finest  old  silk-velvet  Bourbon  in  that  satchel 
you  ever  wet  your  lips  with."  We  have  been  trifled 
with.  We  no  longer  think  of  the  piece  as  an  exquis 
ite  tale  of  the  old  South :  the  author  has  prostituted 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  17 

his  art,  he  has  been  watching  the  reader  and  grinning 
in  his  sleeve  all  the  while.  He  has  deliberately 
fabricated  the  whole  story  for  no  other  purpose  than 
to  serve  as  an  ambush  for  this  single  vulgar  mo 
ment  of  surprise.  One  begins  the  next  piece,  how 
ever  fine  its  opening,  with  little  of  enjoyment.  We 
have  been  trifled  with :  this  is  not  a  maker  of  litera 
ture,  it  is  a  boy  with  a  bean-shooter  who  is  waiting 
for  you  to  get  into  range;  it  is  an  impish  practical 
joker,  who  is  never  really  serious.  Everywhere  the 
cap  and  bells.  In  "The  Door  of  Unrest"  we  have  a 
central  idea  worthy  of  Hawthorne,  but  it  is  em 
broidered  with  cheapness.  It  is  pure  linen  edged 
with  bunting. 


in 


Before  one  has  finished  even  the  first  volume  of 
the  set,  and  no  matter  which  volume  one  has  chosen, 
one  has  discovered  that  primarily  and  almost  solely 
O.  Henry  was  a  humorist,  a  professional  harlequin, 
an  inheritor  of  the  tradition  of  John  Phoenix  and 
Artemus  Ward.  To  consider  him  seriously  from 
any  other  point  of  view  is  to  be  confronted  swiftly 
with  a  non  sequitur.  He  had  been  trained  pre 
cisely  as  Phoenix  had  been  trained  and  Artemus 
Ward  and  Mark  Twain  and  all  the  others  of  the 
distinctively  American  group  of  literary  comedians, 


18     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

To  create  such  a  writer  there  must  be  schooling  on 
the  frontier,  in  some  remote  area  of  America  where 
individualism  is  religion  and  where  men  are  living 
under  primitive  conditions  in  the  rush  and  excite 
ment  of  some  moving  enterprise.  Before  he  was 
twenty-one  O.  Henry  had  observed  for  some  months, 
never,  however,  as  an  active  participator,  the  rough 
life  of  a  sheep  ranch  in  the  heart  of  the  Southwest, 
and  he  had  learned  among  other  things  how  the 
primitive  man  laughs.  Then  for  twelve  years  he 
had  lived  in  Texas  cities — Austin,  Houston — sur 
rounded  by  men  who  had  been  a  part  of  the  early 
lawless  days  of  the  State.  Western  breeziness  there 
was  in  these  little  cities,  boundless  spirits,  hilarious 
optimism,  sentiment  in  abundance.  To  the  young 
O.  Henry,  by  nature  as  sensitive  to  the  incongruous 
as  was  even  Artemus  Ward,  it  was  school  and 
college. 

He  was  a  comedian  born;  as  a  boy  he  was  con 
sidered  a  wag  and  a  practical  joker;  during  all  of 
his  Western  period  his  companions  were  on  the 
broad  grin  at  the  very  sight  of  him :  he  was  a  mimic, 
a  caricaturist,  a  punster;  he  moved  always  in  a 
gale  of  laughter.  It  pointed  the  way  he  was  to 
go.  As  early  as  1887  he  was  contributing  his 
regular  budget  of  jokes  to  the  "Detroit  Free  Press," 
and  by  1895  he  was  editor  and  proprietor  of  a 
humorous  journal  of  his  own,  "The  Rolling  Stone/' 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  19 

"out  for  the  moss,"  one  dollar  and  fifty  cents  a 
year,  with  the  special  inducement  to  new  subscribers 
that  during  one  month  all  who  would  bring  two 
dollars  would  be  given  on  the  spot  a  premium  of 
fifty  cents,  a  brand  of  humor  that  a  generation 
before  had  been  made  familiar  to  all  Americans 
by  Artemus  Ward.  A  year  it  was  before  "The 
Rolling  Stone"  ceased  to  roll,  and  then  its  editor 
transferred  himself  to  the  "Houston  Daily  Post," 
where,  as  a  variant  to  his  work  as  bank  teller,  he 
filled  a  Eugene-Field-like  column  entitled  "Tales 
of  the  Town."  There  he  might  have  remained 
until  he  died,  pouring  his  newspaper-column  comedy 
into  the  bottomless  pit  of  a  Texan  daily,  had  not 
sudden  good  fortune  in  the  form  of  seemingly 
annihilating  disgrace  overtaken  him  and  sent  him 
flying  from  an  environment  that  had  all  but  swal 
lowed  him.  Until  he  was  thirty-five  O.  Henry  was 
a  professional  newspaper  columnist  of  the  later 
American  type  with  Texas  extravagance,  and  so  far 
as  literature  is  concerned  he  was  nothing  else. 

It  was  the  humor  of  O.  Henry  that  gave  him  his 
first  readers.  The  entire  body  of  his  work  may 
be  classed  as  humor.  It  is  significant  that  when  in 
1903  the  Harpers  accepted  his  genre  story  "The 
Whirligig  of  Time,"  a  story  written  unquestionably 
for  the  body  of  the  magazine,  they  printed  it  in 
"The  Editor's  Drawer."  And  his  humor  is  all  of 


20     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

it  uniquely  American  humor,  as  indigenous  to  the 
American  soil  as  the  early  Mark  Twain.  His  point 
of  view,  his  materials,  his  methods,  his  characters, 
and  the  language  they  used  are  American  or  they 
are  nothing.  His  comparisons  and  allusions  and 
figures  of  speech  are  so  ingrained  with  American 
life  and  expression  that  translation  into  other  lan 
guages  must  be  difficult,  if  not  impossible.  For 
examples  one  may  open  literally  at  random : 

They  're  as  full  of  apathy  as  a  territorial  delegate 
during  the  chaplain's  prayer. 

They  became  inebriated  with  attention,  like  an  At 
lanta  Colonel  listening  to  "Marching  through  Georgia." 

The  common  people  walked  around  in  barefooted 
bunches,  puffing  stogies  that  a  Pittsburgh  millionaire 
would  n't  have  chewed  for  a  dry  smoke  on  Ladies' 
Day  at  his  club. 

He  first  saw  the  light  of  day  in  New  York  at  three 
years  of  age.  He  was  born  in  Pittsburgh,  but  his 
parents  moved  East  the  third  summer  afterward. 

Every  trust  bears  in  its  own  bosom  the  seeds  of 
its  destruction  like  a  rooster  that  crows  near  a  Geor 
gia  colored  Methodist  camp  meeting,  or  a  Republican 
announcing  himself  a  candidate  for  governor  of  Texas. 

Original  as  he  was,  however,  he  added  few  de 
vices  to  those  already  associated  with  distinctively 
American  humor.  He  used  exaggeration  as  out- 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  21 

rageously  as  did  John  Phoenix  or  Mark'  Twain. 
No  one,  indeed,  has  ever  pressed  this  device  to 
deeper  abysses  of  absurdity.  After  a  political 
gathering  many  cigar-stubs  undoubtedly  may  be 
found  scattered  in  the  vicinity,  but  when  O.  Henry 
tells  the  story  the  cigar-stubs  are  knee-deep  for 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  about.  A  man  has  chills  and 
fever :  "He  had  n't  smiled  in  eight  years.  His 
face  was  three  feet  long,  and  it  never  moved  except 
to  take  in  quinine."  A  man  with  the  rheumatism, 
asked  if  he  had  ever  rubbed  the  affected  part  with 
rattlesnake-oil,  replies:  "If  all  the  snakes  I  have 
used  the  oil  of  was  strung  out  in  a  row  they  would 
reach  eight  times  as  far  as  Saturn  and  the  rattles 
could  be  heard  at  Valparaiso,  Indiana,  and  back. 
And  of  a  casual  doctor  in  one  of  his  tales: 

If  Doc  Millikin  had  your  case,  he  made  the  terrors 
of  death  seem  like  an  invitation  to  a  donkey  party. 
He  had  the  bedside  manners  of  a  Piute  medicine-man 
and  the  soothing  presence  of  a  dray  loaded  with  iron 
bridge-girders.  He  was  built  like  a  shad,  and  his 
eyebrows  was  black,  and  his  white  whiskers  trickled 
down  from  his  chin  like  milk  coming  out  of  a  sprin 
kling  pot.  He  had  a  nigger  boy  along  carrying  an  old 
tomato-can  full  of  calomel,  and  a  saw. 

In  the  originality  of  his  exaggerations  no  humor 
ist  has  ever  excelled  him.  His  comparisons  are 


22     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

unique.     There  is  not  a  hackneyed  expression  in 
all  his  volumes.     One  might  quote  indefinitely : 

She  had  hair  the  color  of  the  back  of  a  twenty- 
dollar  gold  certificate,  blue  eyes,  and  a  system  of 
beauty  that  would  make  the  girl  on  the  cover  of  a 
July  magazine  look  like  the  cook  on  a  Monongahela 
coal  barge. 

He  was  the  red-hottest  Southerner  that  ever  smelled 
mint.  He  made  Stonewall  Jackson  and  R.  E.  Lee 
look  like  abolitionists. 

Her  eyes  were  as  big  and  startling  as  bunions. 
He  had  a  voice  like  a  coyote  with  bronchitis. 

Ten  minutes  afterward  the  Captain  arrived  at  the 
rendezvous,  windy  and  thunderous  as  a  dog-day  in 
Kansas. 

He  loosened  up  like  a  Marcel  wave  in  the  surf  of 
Coney. 

Fate  tosses  you  about  like  cork  crumbs  in  wine 
opened  by  an  unfeed  waiter. 

The  mark  of  O.  Henry  is  upon  such  work  as 
peculiarly  and  exclusively  as  is  the  mark  of  Ar- 
temus  Ward  on  the  speeches  of  the  genial  show 
man.  He  has,  too,  the  American  fondness  for 
aphorism,  and  at  times  is  as  pregnant  with  quaint 
philosophy  as  Josh  Billings.  It  is  an  O.  Henry 
philosophy,  however. 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  23 

A  story  with  a  moral  appended  is  like  the  bill  of  a 
mosquito:  it  bores  you,  and  then  injects  a  stinging 
drop  to  irritate  your  conscience. 

A  straw  vote  only  shows  which  way  the  hot  air 
blows. 

What  a  woman  wants  is  what  you  're  out  of. 

The  lover  smiles  when  he  thinks  he  has  won;  the 
woman  who  loves  ceases  to  smile  with  victory.  He 
ends  a  battle;  she  begins  hers. 

There  ain't  a  sorrow  in  the  chorus  that  a  lobster 
cannot  heal. 

Words  are  as  wax  in  his  hands : 

Annette  Fletcherized  large  numbers  of  romantic 
novels. 

The  stage  curtain,  blushing  pink  at  the  name  "As 
bestos"  inscribed  upon  it,  came  down  with  a  slow 
midsummer  movement.  The  audience  trickled  lei 
surely  down  the  elevator  and  stairs. 

We  laugh  often  at  the  very  freshness  and  newness 
of  his  phrases.  He  hits  at  times  the  nail  on  the 
head  precisely.  One  feels  the  glow  that  only  the 
perfect  can  give  when  one  comes  upon  felicities  like 
these : 

She  was  as  tidy  as  a  cherry  blossom. 

At  length  he  reached  'the  flimsy,  fluttering  little  soul 
of  the  shop-girl.  Tremblingly,  awfully  her  moth 


24     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

wings  closed  and  she  seemed  about  to  settle  on  the 
flower  of  love. 

Her  uplifted  happy  eyes,  as  bright  and  clear  as  the 
water  in  trout  pools. 

Something  mushy  and  heavily  soft  like  raised  dough 
leaned  against  Jim's  leg  and  chewed  his  trousers  with 
a  yeasty  growl.  [This  of  a  pug  dog.] 

No  device  for  raising  a  laugh  but  he  has  used 
it  to  the  utmost,  and  for  the  most  part  with  a  zest 
that  is  primitive  in  its  emphasis.  Open  him  any 
where,  at  random:  outrageous  non  sequiturs,  most 
hideous  coinages,  malaproprieties,  deliberate  mis 
quotations,  slang  exaggerated  to  the  limit  of  endur 
ance — nowhere  outside  of  the  comic  supplement 
can  you  find  a  wilder  hodgepodge  of  incongruity. 
Not  even  John  Phoenix  has  made  such  startling  use 
of  irreverence.  To  him  nothing  is  sacred:  "Be 
considerable  moanin'  of  the  bars  when  I  put  out  to 
sea/'  soliloquizes  the  Toledo  man  while  he  is  dying 
of  consumption ;  "I  've  patronized  'em  pretty  freely." 
He  delights  in  biblical  exegesis.  This  is  his  version 
of  the  Samson  story : 

She  gave  her  old  man  a  hair  cut,  and  everybody 
knows  what  a  man's  head  looks  like  after  a  woman 
cuts  his  hair.  And  then  when  the  Pharisees  came 
round  to  guy  him,  he  was  so  ashamed  he  went  to 
work  and  kicked  the  whole  house  down  on  top  of  the 
whole  outfit. 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  25 

But  the  most  prominent  humorous  mannerism 
of  O.  Henry,  the  one  that  runs  like  a  falsetto  motif 
through  all  his  work,  is  a  variety  of  euphemism, 
the  translating  of  simple  words  and  phrases  into 
resounding  and  inflated  circumlocutions.  So  com 
pletely  did  this  trick  take  possession  of  him  that 
one  may  denominate  it  a  literary  cliche,  the  trade 
mark  of  O.  Henry.  All  his  characters  make  use 
of  it  as  a  dialect.  Sometimes  it  is  even  funny. 
A  waiter  is  not  a  waiter  but  "a  friendly  devil 
in  a  cabbage-scented  hell";  a  tramp  becomes  a 
"knight  on  a  restless  tour  of  the  cities" ;  a  remark 
about  the  weather  becomes  "a  pleasant  reference 
to  meteorological  conditions."  Mr.  Brunelli  does 
not  fall  in  love  with  Katy :  "Mr.  Brunelli,  being 
impressionable  and  a  Latin,  fell  to  conjugating  the 
verb  amare  with  Katy  in  the  objective  case."  John 
Hopkins  buys  not  a  cheap  cigar  but  a  "bunch  of 
spinach,  car-fare  grade.'*  A  reasonable  amount 
of  this,  when  at  its  best,  is  tolerable,  perhaps,  but 
O.  Henry  wears  the  device  threadbare.  Constantly 
he  seems  straining  for  bizarre  effect,  for  outrageous 
circumlocutions,  for  unheard-of  methods  of  not 
calling  a  spade  a  spade.  A  plain  statement  like  "the 
woman  looked  at  him,  hoping  he  would  invite  her 
to  a  champagne  supper,"  becomes  with  O.  Henry 
"She  turned  languishing  eyes  upon  him  as  a  hope 
ful  source  of  lobsters  and  the  delectable,  ascend- 


26     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

ant  globules  of  effervescence."  It  is  too  much. 
And  at  this  point  lies  O.  Henry's  chief  failure  as 
a  humorist.  Mark  Twain  was  laughable  even  when 
he  was  trying  to  be  serious.  He  was  born  with  a 
drawl  both  in  his  voice  and  his  pen.  Humor  with 
him  was  a  spontaneous  thing.  It  was  so  with 
Artemus  Ward.  But  the  humor  of  O.  Henry  is 
a  manufactured  humor,  the  humor  of  a  man  who  is 
brilliant  rather  than  droll.  The  artificiality  of  it 
at  times  is  painfully  obvious.  One  of  his  manner 
isms,  for  instance,  is  the  use  of  incongruous  mix 
tures,  of  a  series  of  threes  for  the  last  unexpected 
and  outrageous  ingredient  of  which  the  reader 
feels  he  must  have  strained  hard.  Such  compounds 
as  these  are  deliberately  concocted,  and  the  laugh 
that  follows  is  of  the  variety  that  follows  a  pun : 

He  seems  to  me  to  be  a  sort  of  mixture  of  Maltese 
kitten,  sensitive  plant,  and  a  member  of  a  stranded 
"Two  Orphans"  company. 

He  was  dressed  somewhere  between  a  Kansas  City 
detective,  Buffalo  Bill,  and  the  town  dog-catcher  of 
Baton  Rouge. 

Another  of  his  overworked  devices,  laughable  at 
first  but  distressingly  artificial  and  tiresome  after  one 
reads  long  in  his  books,  is  incongruous  association. 

His  hair  was  opalescent  and  his  conversation  frag 
mentary. 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  27 

She  possessed  two  false  teeth  and  a  sympathetic 
heart. 

He  had  gout  very  bad  in  one  foot,  a  house  near 
Gramercy  Park,  half  a  million  dollars,  and  a  daughter. 

They  took  me  by  surprise  and  my  horse  by  the 
bridle. 

O.  Henry  is  a  humorist,  a  John  Phoenix  up  to 
date  and  beyond,  an  entertainer  of  the  journalistic 
school,  a  wood-pulp  comedian  whose  sketches  should 
be  illustrated  by  the  creator  of  Mutt  and  Jeff  and, 
if  dramatized,  should  be  acted  by  Charlie  Chaplin. 
That  his  work  has  in  it  oases  of  beauty,  that  he 
has  moments  when  he  shows  himself  possessed  of 
surprising  powers,  that  he  is  original  even  to  a 
startling  degree,  only  emphasizes  the  tragedy  of  his 
literary  career.  His  undoubted  powers  he  sur 
rendered  deliberately  to  Momus;  instead  of  making 
himself,  as  undoubtedly  he  might,  the  Cervantes 
or  the  Mark  Twain  of  his  generation,  he  expended 
himself  in  impish  capers  and  jocosities  for  "the 
groundlings,  who,  for  the  most  part,  are  capable  of 
nothing  but  inexplicable  dumb-shows  and  noise." 

IV 

If  his  admirers  would  but  accept  him  simply 
as  a  humorist,  a  literary  comedian,  the  latest  member 
of  the  John  Phoenix,  Artemus  Ward,  Josh  Billings, 


28    Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Bill  Nye  school,  one  might  go  with  them  at  times 
even  to  superlatives,  but  to  label  him  simply  as 
a  humorist  is  not  enough :  he  must  be  classified 
with  Poe  and  Hawthorne  and  Maupassant ;  he  must 
be  added  to  the  great  short  story  writers  of  the 
world;  he  must  be  credited  with  having  given  to 
the  form  a  new  social  content.  And  the  voices 
that  demand  this  are  voices  not  to  be  disregarded. 
What  of  O.  Henry  as  a  writer  of  fiction? 

With  the  recent  biography  has  come  a  document 
of  peculiar  value  for  our  study:  the  author's  own 
list  of  his  first  twelve  stories  in  the  order  he  wrote 
them  during  the  years  1898-1901  while  he  was  in 
the  Ohio  State  prison.  "Whistling  Dick's  Christ 
mas  Stocking,"  it  would  seem,  was  his  first  attempt 
at  the  short  story,  and  as  we  read  it  we  feel  that  it 
was  by  no  accident  that  it  was  accepted  and  published 
by  the  first  standard  magazine  to  reduce  its  sub 
scription  price  and  popularize  deliberately  its  literary 
content. 

Beginning  with  the  closing  years  of  the  century 
had  come  a  demand  for  the  unusual,  for  realistic 
and  exciting  fiction  made  by  writers  who  had  been 
a  part  of  what  they  told.  Jack  London  with  his 
vivid  tales  of  the  Alaska  winter  was  coming  into 
focus;  Richard  Harding  Davis,  reporter  extraor 
dinary,  who  had  been  everywhere  and  had  seen  the 
feet  of  clay  of  all  idols,  was  in  the  center  of  the 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  29 

literary  stage.  The  epoch  of  historical  romance 
was  passing.  A  story  writer  to  be  read  now  must 
have  had  an  experience, 

Quaeque  ipsi  miserrima  vidi, 
Et  quorum  pars  magna  fui. 

The  new  tale  with  the  strange  signature  "O.  Henry" 
gained  at  once  a  hearing  from  the  clientele  of 
"McClure's"  because  of  the  strangeness  and  fresh 
ness  of  its  content.  It  dealt  with  the  winter  exodus 
of  tramps  from  the  North  toward  New  Orleans, 
and  it  was  told  apparently  by  one  who  had  himself 
been  a  tramp,  who  knew  all  the  ritual  and  all  the 
argot  of  the  order,  and  who  spoke  with  authority. 
This  initial  story,  as  we  study  it  now,  knowing  its 
origin,  reveals  much.  The  transition  from  Sydney 
Porter,  the  Texan  newspaper  columnist,  to  O. 
Henry,  the  short  story  writer,  came  through  Bret 
Harte.  It  is  a  story  of  sentiment,  theatric  rather 
than  realistic,  theatric  indeed  to  the  point  of  melo 
drama  and  falseness  to  life.  The  central  incident 
is  clearly  impossible:  one  stocking  from  a  newly- 
puchased  pair — are  not  new  stockings  fastened  to 
gether  or  at  least  rolled  together? — works  out  of 
the  bundle  of  Christmas  goods  lying  at  the  bottom 
of  the  wagon  and  falls  at  the  feet  of  a  tramp  who 
is  trudging  wearily  along  the  highway.  A  little 
later  this  same  stocking  with  a  stone  and  a  note 


30     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

in  it  is  hurled  at  least  a  quarter  of  a  mile — as  the 
story  is  told  it  cannot  be  less — straight  through  a 
window  to  fall  exactly  at  the  feet  of  its  owner.  The 
central  character  is  clearly  manufactured  and  not 
true.  As  with  so  much  of  the  work  of  Harte,  the 
tale  is  a  dramatized  paradox  with  lay  figures :  a 
besotted  tramp,  after  years  of  vagrancy,  becomes 
a  man  again  because  a  little  girl  by  a  happy  im 
pulse  wishes  him  "Merry  Christmas" ;  then — second 
paradox — when  a  permanent  home  is  offered  him 
as  a  reward  for  saving  the  house,  he  awakes  and 
flees  in  utter  terror  into  his  old  life  of  vagrancy. 
Even  the  style  reveals  the  influence  of  Harte. 
"Ther  bloomin'  little  skeezicks !"  says  Whistling 
Dick  reminiscently,  as  he  looks  at  the  stocking; 
"The  d — d  little  cuss!"  says  Kentuck,  as  he  looks 
at  the  thumb  the  baby  had  grasped. 

Precisely  the  same  attitude  toward  life  and  ma 
terial  we  find  in  "An  Afternoon  Miracle,"  "The 
Sphynx  Apple,"  "Christmas  by  Injunction,"  and  in 
deed  in  all  his  stories  of  the  Southwest.  All  were 
molded  by  Harte,  as  Harte  was  molded  by  Dickens. 
The  West  is  used  as  startling  and  picturesque  back 
ground;  the  characters  are  the  conventional  types 
of  Western  melodrama :  desperadoes,  cow-boys, 
train-robbers,  sheep-men,  miners — all  of  them  redo 
lent  of  the  paint-box  and  resplendent  from  the 
costume-room.  Like  Harte,  the  writer  had  no 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  31 

real  love  for  the  West,  and  like  Harte  again,  he  never 
worked  with  conviction  and  with  sympathy  to  show 
the  real  soul  of  it.  A  few  times  the  glow  of  in 
sight  and  sympathy  hovers  over  the  fifteen  studies 
he  made  of  his  native  South — by  all  means  the  best 
part  of  his  fiction — but  rarely  does  one  find  it  in 
the  rest  of  his  work;  certainly  not  at  all  in  the 
fifty-seven  tales  that  deal  with  the  Southwest.  There 
is  nothing  about  them  fundamentally  Western.  By 
a  change  of  two  hundred  words  or  so  any  one  of 
them  could  be  transferred  to  the  East,  and  even  to 
New  York  City,  and  lose  not  at  all  by  the  transfer. 
Simply  by  changing  half  a  dozen  proper  names, 
"The  Indian  Summer  of  Dry  Valley  Johnson"  could 
be  laid  in  Hoboken,  New  Jersey,  and  gain  there 
by.  Johnson  could  just  as  well  be  a  milk-man  from 
Geneva,  New  York.  Try  it.  Yet  it  is  for  its 
•wild  Western  setting  that  most  readers  find  it 
attractive. 

The  external  manner  of  Harte  he  outgrew,  but 
never  did  he  free  himself  from  the  less  obvious 
faults  that  make  the  work  of  both  men  inferior 
when  compared  with  those  absolute  standards  that 
time  has  decreed  a  work  of  art  must  have  if  it  is 
at  all  to  endure :  neither  of  the  men  had  a  philosophy 
of  life,  and  neither  of  them  presented  humanity  as 
humanity  actually  is  or  as  sane  idealists  dream  that 
humanity  should  be.  Neither  of  them  told  the 


32     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

truth.  Of  the  two  Harte  is  by  far  the  greater,  for 
Harte's  work  is  single — never  does  he  give  us  the 
serious  mixed  with  buffoonery — and  Harte  once  or 
twice  in  all  his  work  did  succeed  in  making  us  feel 
an  individual  human  soul. 

In  the  second  group  of  O.  Henry's  stories  fall  the 
South  American  sketches  and  "The  Gentle  Grafter" 
studies  that  fill  up  two  entire  volumes  and  overflow 
into  other  volumes  of  the  set.  Despite  much  splen 
did  description  and  here  and  there  marvelous  skill 
in  reproducing  the  atmosphere  and  the  spirit  of  the 
tropics,  they  are  literature  at  its  worst.  Without 
a  doubt  the  Gentle  Grafter  had  an  actual  prototype. 
The  stories  may  have  had  their  basis  in  actual  hap 
penings  as  related  by  a  voluble  convict  in  the  Ohio 
iprison;  all  his  material  for  his  tales  of  bank- 
robbers  and  train-robbers  and  fugitives  from  justice 
probably  was  from  evidence  gathered  at  first  hand. 
Al  Jennings's  amazing  book  throws  much  light  here, 
but,  for  all  that,  the  tales  are  false.  This  is  not 
life:  it  is  opera  bouffe.  The  characters  are  no 
more  flesh  and  blood  than  Punch  and  Judy.  They 
talk  a  dialect  unknown  outside  the  comic  theater. 
Sophomores  at  dinner  sometimes  use  circumlocution 
in  the  excess  of  high  spirits,  and  "drive  up  the  cow" 
takes  the  place  of  "pass  the  milk" :  but  here  every 
body  is  sophomoric  and  super-sophomoric ;  here  the 
veriest  yokel  converses  in  vocables  sesquipedalian, 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  33 

Just  a  common  Indiana  hotel-keeper  is  asked  casually 
concerning  the  ownership  of  a  house: 

"That,"  says  he,  "is  the  domicile  and  the  arboreal, 
terrestrial,  and  horticultural  accessories  of  Partner 
Ezra  Plunkett." 

Andy  Tucker  and  Jeff  Peters,  the  confidence  men, 
talk  always  in  this  amazing  strain : 

It  does  seem  kind  of  hard  on  one's  professional 
pride  to  lope  off  with  a  bearded  pard's  competency, 
especially  after  he  has   nominated   you  custodian  of 
.his  bundle  in  the  sappy  insouciance  of  his  urban  in 
discrimination. 

An  Irishman  in  the  wilderness  bids  a  stranger 
to  dismount  in  terms  like  these : 

Segregate  yourself  from  your  pseudo-equine  quad 
ruped. 

The  sheep-herder  Paisley  Fish  and  his  companion 
talk  always  at  this  astounding  altitude : 

"I  reckon  you  understand,"  says  Paisley,  "that  I  Ve 
made  up  my  mind  to  accrue  that  widow  woman  as 
part  and  parcel  in  and  to  my  hereditaments  forever, 
both  domestic,  sociable,  legal,  and  otherwise,  until 
death  us  do  part.  The  smiles  of  womanv"  goes  on 
Paisley,  "is  the  whirlpool  of  Squills  and  Chalybeates, 
into  which  vortex  the  good  ship  Friendship  is  often 
drawn  and  dismembered." 

This  is  not  an  occasional  pleasantry  for  humorous 


34     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

effect :  it  is  the  every-day  speech  of  all  the  char 
acters.  They  talk  nothing  else  from  the  beginning 
of  "The  Gentle  Grafter"  volume  to  the  end  of  "The 
Heart  of  the  West"  collection,  and  not  one  of  the 
characters  in  the  other  volumes  is  entirely  free 
from  it.  George  Ade  wrote  in  slang;  but  this  is 
not  slang,  for  slang  is  the  actual  words  of  actual 
men;  and  since  the  world  began  no  human  being, 
even  in  Texas,  ever  used  language  like  this,  save 
as  he  manufactured  it  deliberately  for  the  burlesque 
stage. 

Art  is  truth,  truth  to  facts,  truth  to  actual  human 
nature;  and  art  also  is  truth  to  the  presumption, 
fundamental  at  least  in  civilized  lands,  that  truth  is 
superior  to  falsehood,  that  right  is  superior  to 
wrong,  and  that  actual  crime  is  never  to  be  con 
doned.  Despite  the  freedom  of  his  pages  from 
salacious  stain,  O.  Henry  must  be  classed  as  an 
immoral  writer;  not  immoral  because  he  used  vul 
garly  picaresque  material  or  because  he  recorded  the 
success  of  villainy,  or  dealt  with  areas  of  life 
"where  there  are  n't  no  ten  commandments,"  but  be 
cause  he  sided  with  his  law-breakers,  laughed  at 
their  crimes,  and  condoned  their  schemes  for  duping 
the  unwary.  It  does  not  excuse  Jeff  Peters  to  ex 
plain  that  he  fleeces  only  those  who  have  fleece  to 
spare,  or  those  rich  ones  who  enjoy  an  occasional 
fleecing  because  it  affords  them  a  new  sensation. 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  35 

One  needs  not  be  a  Puritan  or  a  blue-law  maker  to 
assert  with  all  emphasis  that  where  honesty  ceases 
to  be  fundamental  there  civilization  lapses  and  the 
jungle  begins  to  enter.  "The  Gentle  Grafter" 
stories  are  cloth  of  the  same  loom  that  wove  "Raf 
fles"  and  "Get-Rich-Quick  Wallingford,"  and  all 
the  others  on  that  shelf  of  books  which  are  the 
shame  of  American  literature. 


V 

The  last  period  in  O.  Henry's  life  began  in  1904 
when  the  New  York  "World"  engaged  him  to 
furnish  a  story  a  week  for  its  Sunday  supplement. 
He  had  been  in  the  city  two  years,  and  had  supported 
himself  by  writing  for  the  magazines  his  stories  of 
life  in  the  Southwest  and  in  South  America.  He 
had  studied  the  demands  of  the  time  from  the  New 
York  point  of  view.  Moreover  he  had  discovered 
Maupassant.  His  biographer  records  that  during 
his  later  years  he  kept  the  work  of  the  great  conte- 
writer  always  within  reach;  we  should  have  known 
it  had  he  not  told  us.  His  style  began  to  change: 
he  was  gaining  in  ease,  in  structural  art,  in  brilliancy 
of  diction.  He  had  discovered  the  possibilities  of 
finesse,  of  carefully  balanced  climaxes,  and  of  unex 
pected  denouement.  Now  it  was,  at  the  opening 
of  his  "World"  supplement  period,  that  there  was 


36     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

born  what  many  of  his  readers  consider  the  real 
O.  Henry.  Seldom  now  did  he  attempt  regular  plot 
stories  of  the  type  of  "A  Blackjack  Bargainer"  and 
"Georgia's  Ruling."  The  greater  number  of  his 
137  or  more  New  York  "World"  pieces  cannot  be 
called  short  stories  at  all.  They  are  familiar  nar 
rative  sketches,  expanded  anecdotes  told  by  a  ra 
conteur  who  expects  an  explosion  of  laughter  at 
the  proper  moment :  they  are  humorous  "stories", 
in  the  newspaper  sense  of  the  word. 

The  "newspaper":  the  word  brings  illumination. 
When  asked  his  profession  in  the  Ohio  prison,  he 
replied  "newspaper  reporter."  With  the  exception 
of  a  single  story  in  "Harper's  Magazine"  and  one  in 
"The  Century"— "The  Missing  Chord,"  June,  1904 
— all  his  work  was  first  of  all  published  on  wood- 
pulp  paper — in  the  daily  press  or  in  the  ten-cent 
magazine.  His  "World"  stories  make  up  more  than 
one  third  of  his  entire  product.  What  the  paper 
really  did  was  to  engage  him  as  a  reporter — a  highly 
privileged  reporter  at  large,  told  to  roam  the  city 
for  material  and  to  bring  in  one  entertaining  "story" 
each  week. 

The  requirements  of  the  newspaper  "story"  are 
exacting.  It  must  be  vivid,  unusual,  unhackneyed, 
and  it  must  have  in  it  the  modern  quality  of  "go." 
It  is  usually  an  improvisation  by  one  who  through 
long  practice  has  gained  the  mastery  of  his  pen, 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  37 

and  by  one,  moreover,  who  has  been  living  in  con 
tact  with  that  which  he  would  portray.  It  is  written 
in  heat,  excitedly,  to  be  read  with  excitement  and 
thrown  away.  There  must  be  no  waste  material 
— no  "lumber,"  no  "blue-pencil  stuff,"  and  there 
must  be  a  "punch  in  every  line,"  a  constant  bidding 
for  attention.  After  the  Devil's  Island  explosion 
in  New  York,  a  friend  sent  me  the  "story"  of  the 
tragedy  that  one  of  the  city  dailies  published  not 
many  minutes  after  the  event,  and  demanded  where 
in  classic  literature  I  could  find  a  more  vivid  piece 
of  composition.  Yet  it  had  been  dashed  off  in  head 
long  haste  to  be  read  in  headlong  haste  and  then 
thrown  away.  It  was  a  brilliant  tour  de  force 
called  forth  by  the  demand  of  the  time  for  sensation, 
for  utter  newness,  for  fresh  new  devices  to  gain,  if 
only  for  an  instant,  the  jaded  attention  of  a  public 
supersaturated  with  sensation. 

The  complaint  has  come  that  one  does  not  re 
member  the  stories  of  O.  Henry.  Neither  does  one 
remember  the  newspaper  "stories"  he  reads  from 
morning  to  morning,  brilliant  though  they  may  be. 
The  difficulty  comes  from  the  fact  that  the  writer  is 
concerned  solely  with  his  reader.  The  dominating 
canon  of  his  art  is,  Anything  to  catch  the  reader. 
He  is  catering,  he  knows,  to  the  blase,  he  is  mixing 
condiments  for  palates  gross  with  sensation.  If  the 
"story"  is  to  be  printed  as  fiction,  wider  latitude 


38     Side-Lights  on  'American  Literature 

is  allowable.  Humor  is  the  surest  device  with  which 
to  catch  Americans,  but  it  must  be  American  humor, 
grossly  strong,  stingingly  piquant,  sensationally  new. 
The  soul  of  the  Sunday  supplement  is  the  unex 
pected;  its  style  is  an  exploitation  of  the  startling. 
Everywhere  paradox,  incongruity,  electric  flash 
lights,  "go" — New  York  City,  jazz  bands,  Coney 
Island,  the  Follies,  Charlie  Chaplin,  the  colored 
monstrosities  of  Boob  McNut,  twentieth  century 
America  in  maddest  career. 

O.  Henry  lacks  repose,  and  art  is  serene.  He  does 
not  lift  us.  He  moves  us  tremendously  at  times, 
but  so  does  a  narcotic.  Even  in  his  brief  moments 
of  seriousness  we  cannot  take  him  seriously.  How 
can  we  approach  in  the  spirit  of  art,  serious  art  that 
is  worth  living  with,  a  story  with  the  title  "Psyche 
and  the  Psky scraper,"  or  one  that  opens  like 
this: 

The  poet  Longfellow — or  was  it  Confucius,  the  in 
ventor  of  Wisdom? — remarked: 

"Life  is  real,  life  is  earnest; 
And  things  are  not  what  they  seem." 

As  mathematics  are — or  is :  thanks,  old  subscriber ! — 
the  only  just  rule  by  which  the  questions  of  life  can 
be  measured,  let  us,  by  all  means,  adjust  our  theme  to 
the  straight  edge  and  the  balanced  column  of  the  great 
goddess  Two-and-Two-Makes-Four. 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  39 

If  readers  would  only  be  content  to  use  O.  Henry 
as  a  condiment,  exhilarating  >at  times  and  highly 
stimulating,  but  never  to  be  used  as  a  food,  if  they 
would  place  him  where  he  belongs  as  vaudeville — 
brilliant,  humorous,  stimulatingly  original — for  the 
beguiling  of  an  empty  hour,  even  the  most  old- 
fashioned  of  critics  would  have  no  complaint,  but 
to  rate  him  as  the  army  of  copy-readers  and  re 
viewers,  even  professors  of  literature,  have  rated 
him,  as  a  maker  of  classics,  as  the  great  master  of 
modern  literature,  as  the  creator  who  has  socialized 
the  short  story,  as  the  equal  of  Poe  and  Hawthorne 
and  Harte  on  their  own  ground,  is  deplorable.  To 
make  him  the  recommended  reading  of  the  rising 
generation,  to  teach  him  in  the  schools,  to  give  him 
to  the  new  rising  group  of  young  authors  as  a  model 
until  the  O.  Henry  manner  and  methods  have  be 
come  a  dominating  force  in  the  fiction  of  the  day, 
is  to  teach  that  literature  is  frivolity,  that  it  is 
not  necessarily  to  be  based  on  truth  or  on  the  funda 
mentals  that  underlie  human  life,  and  that  it  is  to 
be  created  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  give  a  mo 
mentary  titillation,  a  beguiling  thing  to  be  taken  up 
with  the  pipe  and  the  cigar  in  moments  of  relaxation 
and  to  be  brushed  out  with  the  ashes.  If  this  be  the 
ideal,  then  the  civilization  of  our  day  is  written  on 
wood-pulp  fiber  with  water. 

O.  Henry  is  not  a  writer  of  literature  in  the  sense 


40    Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

that  the  word  literature  has  been  used  by  all  the 
generations  up  to  our  own ;  he  is  not  a  model  to  be 
studied  by  any  writer  save  the  professional  news 
paper  humorist.  The  daily  columnist  may  give  his 
days  and  nights  to  O.  Henry  and  profit  thereby, 
but  not  the  writer  who  is  writing  for  publication 
on  really  durable  material.  Always  is  he  in  altitu- 
dissimo;  the  music  is  always  at  full  orchestra  with 
the  traps  in  furious  action.  It  is  keyed  to  the  jazz 
note,  to  hilarious  familiarity,  to  end-man  high  spirits. 
The  author  slaps  his  reader  on  the  back  and  laughs 
loudly  as  if  he  were  in  a  bar-room.  Never  the  finer 
subtleties  of  suggested  effect,  never  the  unsuspected 
though  real  and  moving  moral  background;  seldom 
the  softer  tones  that  touch  the  deeper  life  and  move 
the  soul,  rare  indeed  the  moments  when  the  reader 
feels  a  sudden  tightening  of  the  throat  and  a  quick 
ening  of  the  pulse.  It  is  the  humor — again  I  say 
it — of  the  comic  journalist,  an  enormously  clever 
and  original  journalist  to  be  sure,  rather  than  the 
insight  of  a  serious  portrayer  of  human  life;  it  is 
the  day's  work  of  an  experienced  special  reporter 
eager  that  his  "stories"  shall  please  his  unpleasable 
chief  and  his  capricious  readers  long  ago  outwearied 
with  being  pleased. 


The  Age  of  O.  Henri/  41 


VI 

On  the  mechanical  side  of  short  story  construction 
O.  Henry  was  skilful  indeed.  He  had  the  unusual 
power  of  gripping  his  reader's  attention  and  compel 
ling  him  to  go  on  and  on  to  the  end.  Moreover, 
he  was  possessed  of  an  extraordinary  originality, 
finesse,  brilliancy  of  style  and  diction,  and  that 
sense  of  form  which  can  turn  every  element  of  the 
seemingly  careless  narrative  to  a  single  startling 
focus.  It  is  this  architectonic  quality  of  the  work 
of  O.  Henry  that  has  endeared  him  to  the  makers  of 
handbooks  and  correspondence  courses.  It  was  this 
in  addition  to  the  freshness  and  originality  of  his 
humor  and  his  diction  that  has  given  him  as  his 
most  enthusiastic  admirers  that  most  difficult  of  all 
groups  to  please,  the  manuscript  readers  for  pub 
lishing  houses  and  the  professional  reviewers  of 
books.  Amid  the  dead  mass  of  material  that  con 
stituted  their  day's  work  O.  Henry  shone  like  a  star. 
His  technique  is  peculiar.  He  began  at  the  end  of 
his  story  always  and  worked  backward.  With  him 
it  was  primarily  an  intellectual  problem :  the  reader 
and  his  psychological  processes  were  constantly  be 
fore  him.  A  typical  O.  Henry  tale  begins  with 
seemingly  random  remarks  of  a  facetiously  philo 
sophical  nature  illustrated  at  length  with  an  ex- 


42     Side-Lights  on  'American  Literature 

ample  seemingly  taken  on  the  impulse  of  the  moment. 
The  example  widens  into  a  rather  unusual  situation. 
The  reader  becomes  interested  as  to  the  solution  of 
the  increasingly  complex  problem,  finds  that  ma 
terials  have  been  given  in  abundance,  sees  clearly 
at  length  how  it  is  going  to  end,  is  about  to  throw 
the  tale  aside  as  not  worth  pursuing  further — then 
suddenly  is  given  an  absolutely  other  solution 
that  comes  like  a  jet  of  water  in  the  face.  Study 
the  mechanism  of  such  tales  as  "Girl,"  "The  Pen 
dulum,"  "The  Marry  Month  of  May,"  and  the  like. 
One  may  detect  instantly  the  germ  of  the  story, 
the  sole  cause  why  it  was  written.  A  whole  nar 
rative  is  built  up  carefully  to  bring  this  sentence 
into  startling  focus  at  the  end:  "At  last  I  have 
found  something  that  will  not  bag  at  the  knees,"  or 
this  "  'Oh,  Andy/  she  sighed,  'this  is  great !  Sure 
I  '11  marry  wid  ye.  But  why  did  n't  ye  tell  me  ye  was 
the  cook?  I  was  near  turnin'  ye  down  for  bein' 
one  of  thim  foreign  counts/  ' 

Intellectually  brilliant  as  all  this  may  be,  however, 
one  must  not  forget  that  it  concerns  only  the  ex 
ternals  of  short  story  art.  The  failures  were  at 
vital  points.  A  short  story  must  have  characteriza 
tion,  and  O.  Henry's  pen  turned  automatically  to 
caricature.  We  seldom  see  his  characters:  we  see 
only  the  externals  of  costumes,  masks  and  make-ups, 
and  exaggerated  physical  peculiarity.  He  gives  us 


The  Age  of  O.  Henri/  43 

types,  not  individuals,  and  often  he  describes  them 
in  terms  of  types.  Here  is  the  wife  of  one  of  his 
heroes : 

Mrs.  Hopkins  was  like  a  thousand  others.  The 
auriferous  tooth,  the  sedentary  disposition,  the  Sun 
day  afternoon  wanderlust,  the  draught  upon  the  deli 
catessen  store  for  home-made  comforts,  the  furor  for 
department  store  marked-down  sales,  the  feeling  of 
superiority  to  the  lady  in  the  third-floor  front  who 
wore  genuine  ostrich  tips  and  had  two  names  over  her 
bell,  the  mucilaginous  hours  during  which  she  re 
mained  glued  to  the  window  sill,  the  vigilant  avoid 
ance  of  the  instalment  man,  the  tireless  patronage  of 
the  acoustics  of  the  dumb-waiter  shaft — all  the  attri 
butes  of  the  Gotham  flat-dweller  were  hers. 

One  never  sees  in  his  stories  a  shop-girl ;  it  is  always 
the  shop-girl,  described  in  generalities  like  this : 

She  was  a  wonder.  Small  and  half-way  pretty, 
and  as  much  at  her  ease  in  that  cheap  cafe  as  though 
she  were  only  in  the  Palmer  House,  Chicago,  with  a 
souvenir  spoon  already  hidden  in  her  shirt  waist. 
She  was  natural.  Two  things  I  noticed  about  her 
especially.  Her  belt  buckle  was  exactly  in  the  middle 
of  her  back,  and  she  didn't  tell  us  that  a  large  man 
with  a  ruby  stick-pin  had  followed  her  up  all  the  way 
from  Fourteenth  Street. 

Or  this : 

Masie  was  beautiful.     She  was  a  deep-tinted  blonde, 


44     Side-Lights  on  'American  Literature 

with  the  calm  poise  of  a  lady  who  cooks  butter  cakes 
in  a  window.  She  stood  behind  her  counter  in  the 
Biggest  Store;  and  as  you  closed  your  hand  over  the 
tape-line  for  your  glove  measure  you  thought  of  Hebe ; 
and  as  you  looked  again  you  wondered  how  she  had 
come  by  Minerva's  eyes. 

But  generally  he  is  not  so  specific  even  as  this. 
How  shall  one  visualize  a  character  described  in 
these  terms: 

She  was  looking  like  a  bulbul,  a  gazelle,  and  a  tea 
rose,  and  her  eyes  were  as  soft  and  bright  as  two 
quarts  of  cream  skimmed  off  the  Milky  Way. 

Or  a  hero  like  this : 

He  had  a  face  like  a  picture  of  a  knight — like  one 
of  that  Round  Table  bunch — and  a  voice  like  a  'cello 
solo.  And  his  manners !  Lynn,  if  you  'd  take  John 
Drew  in  his  best  drawing-room  scene  and  compare 
the  two,  you  'd  have  John  arrested  for  disturbing 
the  peace. 

Again,  to  speak  only  of  fundamentals,  a  short 
story  should  have  dialogue  that  is  natural  and 
inevitable.  The  characters  should  talk  as  such  peo 
ple  in  life  would  actually  talk.  In  his  sketch  "The 
World  and  the  Door,"  O.  Henry  makes  this  perti 
nent  remark:  "I  read  in  a  purely  fictional  story 
the  other  day  the  line :  'Be  it  so,  said  the  policeman.' 
Nothing  so  strange  has  yet  cropped  out  in  Truth," 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  45 

and  yet  in  the  same  volume  he  makes  a  college  pro 
fessor  talk  like  this:  "You  wind-jammers  who 
apply  bandy-legged  theories  to  concrete  categorical 
syllogisms  send  logical  conclusions  skallybootin'  into 
the  infinitesimal  ragbag." 

And  I  wonder  if  there  ever  was  a  man  in  the 
world  who,  chosen  at  random  at  night  from  the 
bread-line  in  New  York  and  given  a  dinner  by  a 
whimsical  millionaire  who  has  sent  a  servant  out  to 
secure  some  one  to  dine  with  him,  would  greet  his 
host  whom  he  has  never  seen  with  these  preliminary 
words : 

Good!  Going  to  be  in  courses,  is  it?  All  right, 
my  jovial  ruler  of  Bagdad.  I  'm  your  Scheherazade 
all  the  way  to  the  toothpicks.  You  're  the-  first  Caliph 
with  a  general  Oriental  flavor  I  Ve  struck  since  frost. 
What  luck!  And  I  was  forty-third  in  line. 

Again,  a  short  story  should  be  true,  and  exaggera 
tion  is  not  truth.  A  short  story  should  leave  sharp 
and  indelible  the  impress  of  a  vital  moment  in  the 
history  of  a  human  soul.  It  should,  as  O.  Henry 
himself  has  expressed  it,  "take  you  by  the  throat  like 
a  quinsy,"  and  not  because  of  a  situation  and  not 
because  of  a  skilfully  prepared  moment  of  surprise, 
but  because  of  a  glimpse  into  the  depths  of  a  human 
heart.  To  deal  with  types — the  shop-girl,  the 
grafter,  the  border  desperado — or  with  the  stock 


46     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

figures  of  comedy — the  mother-in-law,  the  fat  man, 
the  maiden  lady — is  to  work  with  abstractions  and 
not  with  an  individual  soul,  and  the  short  story  by 
its  very  nature  is  restricted  to  the  individual.  To 
treat  of  types  is  the  province  of  exposition. 

But  his  shop-girls — are  they  not  individuals? 
O.  Henry  himself  confesses  that  they  are  not.  In 
describing  Nancy  he  realizes  that  he  is  giving  only 
the  characteristics  peculiar  to  the  clan,  and  tries  to 
shift  the  responsibility  upon  the  reader. 

Nancy  you  would  call  a  shop-girl — because  you 
have  the  habit.  There  is  no  type,  but  a  perverse 
generation  is  always  seeking  a  type ;  so  this  is  what 
the  type  should  be.  She  has  the  high-ratted  pompa 
dour,  and  the  exaggerated  straight  front.  Her  skirt 
is  shoddy,  but  has  the  correct  flare.  No  furs  protect 
her  against  the  bitter  spring  air,  but  she  wears  her 
short  broadcloth  jacket  as  jauntily  as  though  it  were 
Persian  lamb !  On  her  face  and  in  her  eyes,  remorse 
less  type-seeker,  is  the  typical  shop-girl  expression. 
It  is  a  look  of  silent  but  contemptuous  revolt  against 
cheated  womanhood ;  of  sad  prophecy  of  the  vengeance 
to  come.  When  she  laughs  her  loudest  the  look  is 
still  there.  The  same  look  can  be  seen  in  the  eyes  of 
Russian  peasants ;  and  those  of  us  left  will  see  it  some 
day  on  Gabriel's  face  when  he  comes  to  blow  us  up. 
It  is  a  look  that  should  wither  and  abash  a  man;  but 
he  has  been  known  to  smirk  at  it  and  offer  flowers — • 
with  a  string  tied  to  them. 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  47 

Had  he  wished  to  avoid  "the  remorseless  type- 
seeker,"  why  did  he  not  take  an  individual  and  seek 
for  differences  rather  than  for  similarities?  Mau 
passant  looked  at  things  which  were  seemingly  alike 
until  he  saw  startling  unlikenesses.  That  was  his 
art.  O.  Henry  writes  expositions  upon  typical 
wrongs  done  the  shop-girl  class  in  American  cities, 
and  it  is  exposition  by  means  of  a  single  test  case. 
The  problem  is  worked  out  with  a  and  b  which  are 
fixed  constants.  Maupassant  avoids  the  type  and 
shows  the  unique  soul.  O.  Henry  in  a  sermon  like 
"An  Unfinished  Story,"  dealing  with  the  pernicious 
system  that  creates  the  type,  or  in  "Elsie  in  New 
York,"  a  jibe  at  reformers  and  nothing  else,  may 
succeed  in  moving  his  reader  to  anger  against  an 
evil,  but  he  leaves  no  single  person  for  us  to  love  or 
hate  or  pity.  "A  Harlem  Tragedy"  is  not  at  all  a 
study  of  New  York  tenement  life :  it  is  a  clever  exer 
cise  in  paradox,  and  it  is  not  true.  His  atmosphere 
is  too  artificial  for  real  emotion;  the  construction 
over-balances  the  material.  "A  Lickpenny  Lover"  is 
brilliant  technique,  but  it  is  not  fundamentally  the 
story  of  a  shop-girl,  and  it  is  based  upon  an  un 
truth.  The  form  of  the  lover's  proposal  had  to  be 
managed  with  care  to  make  possible  that  final  sen 
tence  which  is  the  cause  of  the  tale,  and  no  in 
telligent  lover  as  ardent  in  his  love  as  here  repre 
sented  would  have  failed  to  make  himself  perfectly 


48     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

clear.  It  smells  of  the  footlights;  it  was  deliberately 
manufactured  to  cause  a  moment  of  laughter  at 
the  end. 

Much  of  his  later  work  impresses  us  as  stories 
from  the  lips  of  a  skilful  raconteur  in  a  hotel  lobby 
or  a  club  room.  One  feels  almost  the  physical 
presence  of  the  man  as  one  reads  an  opening  like 
this:  "Suppose  you  should  be  walking  down 
Broadway  after  dinner,  with  ten  minutes  allotted  to 
the  consummation  of  your  cigar  while  you  are 
choosing  between  a  diverting  tragedy  and  something 
serious  in  the  way  of  vaudeville.  Suddenly  a  hand 
is  laid  on  your  arm,"  or  this :  "I  don't  suppose  it 
will  knock  any  of  you  people  off  your  perch  to  read 
a  contribution  from  an  animal.  Mr.  Kipling  and 
a  good  many  others  have  demonstrated  the  fact  that 
animals  can  express  themselves  in  remunerative 
English/'  One  has  the  impression  of  a  man  blink 
ing  over  his  cigar  in  after-dinner  reminiscence  and 
story-telling  hilarity.  The  tales  are  brief — 2500 
words  the  later  ones  average — and  they  follow 
each  other  in  rapid-fire  order  like  a  round  of  good 
ones  at  a  commercial  travelers'  convention.  He  is 
familiar  with  his  reader,  asks  his  advice  on  points 
of  diction  and  grammar,  winks  jovially,  slaps  him 
on  the  back,  and  laughs  aloud:  'There  now! 
it's  over.  Hardly  had  time  to  yawn,  did  you?" 
"Young  lady,  you  would  have  liked  that  grocer's 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  49 

young  man  yourself";  "It  began  way  up  in  Sullivan 
County,  where  so  many  rivers  and  so  much  trouble 
begins — or  begin;  how  would  you  say  that?"  And 
how  he  rambles : 

Ileen  was  a  strictly  vegetable  compound,  guaranteed 
under  the  Pure  Ambrosia  and  Balm  of  Gilead  Act  of 
the  Year  of  the  Fall  of  Adam.  She  was  a  fruit-stand 
blonde — strawberries,  peaches,  cherries,  etc.  Her  eyes 
were  wide  apart,  and  she  possessed  the  calm  of  the 
storm  that  never  comes.  But  it  seems  to  me  that 
words  (at  any  rate  per)  are  wasted  in  an  effort  to  de 
scribe  the  beautiful.  Like  fancy  it  is  engendered  in 
the  eyes.  There  are  three  kinds  of  beauties — I  was 
foreordained  to  be  homiletic;  I  can  never  stick  to  a 
story.  The  first  is  the  freckled  faced,  snub-nosed  girl 
whom  you  like.  The  second  is  Maude  Adams.  The 
third  is,  or  are,  the  ladies  in  Bouguereau's  paintings. 
Ileen  Hinkle  was  the  fourth. 

He  opens  a  story  like  a  responder  to  a  toast  at 
a  banquet,  with  a  theory  or  an  attitude  toward  a 
phase  of  life;  then  he  illustrates  it  with  a  special 
case,  holding  the  "point"  carefully  to  the  end,  to 
bring  it  out  with  dramatic  suddenness  as  he  takes 
his  seat  amid  applause. 

Never  a  writer  so  whimsical.  Who  else  would 
dare  to  write  a  short  story  with  these  rules :  "Let 
the  story  wreck  itself  on  the  spreading  rails  of  the 
Non  Sequitur  Limited,  if  it  will;  first,  you  must 


50     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

take  your  seat  in  the  observation  car  'Raison  d'etre* 
for  one  moment.  ...  It  is  for  no  longer  than  to  con 
sider  a  brief  essay  on  the  subject — let  us  call  it: 
'What 's  Around  the  Corner.' "  "Cabbages  and 
Kings,"  to  use  his  own  words,  is  "tropical  vaude 
ville,"  and  the  book  is  not  widely  different  from  all 
he  wrote.  A  few  times  he  tried  to  break  away  from 
the  method  that  made  him  and  that  ruined  him,  as 
in  "Roads  of  Destiny"  with  its  Hawthorne  sugges 
tion,  and  the  delightful  "The  Church  with  the  Over 
shot  Wheel,"  but  it  was  not  often.  "The  Enchanted 
Kiss,"  an  absinthe  dream  with  parts  as  lurid  and  as 
brilliant  as  De  Quincey,  shows  what  he  might  have 
done  had  he  given  himself  completely  to  such  effort, 
but  the  ephemeral  press  had  laid  its  hands  upon  him 
and  he  rendered  it  its  full  demands. 


VII 

The  influence  of  O.  Henry  upon  the  short  story 
of  the  decade  after  his  death  has  been  alarming.  He 
more  than  any  one  else  helped  to  turn  the  tide  of 
this  popular  form  toward  the  present  all-tyranniz 
ing  demand  for  manner.  The  ghost  of  O.  Henry 
flits  now  over  even  the  standard  magazines,  and  it 
all  but  dominates  some  of  the  more  popular  journals 
like  "The  Saturday  Evening  Post."  It  has  been 
remarked  many  times  that  it  is  hard  to  remember 


The  Age  of  O.  Henri/  51 

O.  Henry  titles  and  to  locate  quotations  from  his 
stories.  Let  the  O.  Henry  specialist  try  his  skill 
at  these  typical  passages: 

He  was  unhappy.  As  he  consumed  his  sensitive 
luncheon  of  roast  beef,  Yorkshire  pudding,  French 
fried  potatoes  and  deep-dish  apple  pie,  he  occasionally 
roared  at  his  wife,  who  had  limousine  upholstery  on  a 
fliver  chassis.  "What  is  it,  dear?  Do  you  feel  the 
sadness  of  things?"  inquired  Mrs.  J.  Bolivar  Whipple. 

He  slipped  from  the  expression  of  a  man  who  wants 
that  check  to  that  of  a  man  presented  with  a  cocktail 
at  a  dinner  he  had  expected  to  be  dry. 

Sylvester  Lehigh  Pennyworth  Tibbie  landed  in 
New  York  City  in  the  dark  of  the  moon,  with  the  left 
hind  foot  of  a  graveyard  rabbit  dangling  from  his 
watch  chain,  and  starting  at  the  foot  of  Liberty  Street, 
where  he  stepped  off  the  ferry-boat,  began  his  assault 
upon  the  Fortress  of  Fortune,  an  attack  of  which  the 
harrowing  details  shall  form  the  warp  and  woof  of 
this  chronicle. 

The  neck-torturing  office  buildings  of  the  lower  city 
did  not  catch  up  the  vibrations  of  S.  L.  P.  Tibbie's 
firm  tread  upon  the  cobblestones  of  West  Street. 
Little  old  N'York  did  not  noticeably  notice  Sylvester. 

I  went  on  to  the  Eagle  Bird,  to  get  something  for 
the  nerve  strain  I'd  been  suffering  from,  owing  to  me 
having  got  a  necktie  that  was  made  by  a  lady  who 
had  lost  her  husband  a  few  years  back  and  did  n't 
think  she  'd  ever  get  used  to  not  having  a  man  round 


52     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

the  house.  Having  got  about  three  fingers  of  relief  I 
went  over  to  the  faro  table  and  sat  down,  and  pretty 
soon  Simmy  come  in  and  we  got  to  talking  about 
church  socials.  I  allowed  that  they  was  a  low  form 
of  recreation,  with  all  the  dangers  to  an  unmarried 
man  that  there  was  at  a  dance  and  none  of  the  fun, 
etc. 

"I  'm  commonly  known  as  'Aps,'  "  says  the  little 
man.  "I  'm  a  darling  and  a  daisy  and  a  killaloo  bird," 
he  says,  mighty  boastful.  "Luck  's  my  pup  and  fol 
lows  me  around,"  he  says.  "Any  man  that  does  me 
a  favor  wears  diamonds  in  the  near  future,  and  the 
man  who  bucks  my  game  is  a  prey  to  bitter  and  un 
availing  regrets  shortly  subsequent.  I  'm  cold  pizen 
with  no  known  anecdote,  or  I  'm  milk  and  honey  blest 
— according  as  you  want  to  take  me.  I  've  jumped 
your  coal  claim." 

If  there  were  a  hundred  men  in  a  crowd  and  Chester 
K.  Pilkins  was  there  he  would  be  the  hundredth  man. 
I  like  that  introduction,  etc. 

The  city  of  Anneburg,  situate  some  distance  south 
of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line  at  the  point  where  the  To 
bacco  Belt  and  the  Cotton  Belt,  fusing  imperceptibly 
together,  mingle  the  nitrogenous  weed  and  the  boiled 
staple  in  the  same  patchwork  strip  of  fertile  loam  lands, 
was  large  enough  to  enjoy  a  Carnegie  Library,  a  mu 
nicipal  graft  scandal,  and  a  reunion  of  the  Confeder 
ate  Veterans'  Association. 

These  were  picked  almost  at  random  from  the  first 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  53 

miscellaneous  collection  of  copies  of  "The  Saturday 
Evening  Post" — some  twelve  numbers  there  hap 
pened  to  be  altogether — that  I  could  lay  my  hands 
upon.  The  quotations  are  from  Sinclair  Lewis, 
Henry  Pason  Dowst,  Kennett  Harris,  and  Irvin 
Cobb. 

The  Society  of  Arts  and  Sciences  at  a  dinner  in 
honor  of  the  genius  of  William  Sydney  Porter  in 
April,  1918,  voted  to  award  a  prize  of  $250  a  year 
for  the  best  short  story  published  the  following  year. 
Two  O.  Henry  Memorial  Award  volumes,  contain 
ing  the  crowned  short  stories  of  1919  and  1920,  have 
been  given  to  the  public.  Instead  of  characterizing 
the  general  content  of  the  latest  of  these  volumes 
myself,  let  me  quote  a  very  recent  review  of  the 
book  by  Vera  Gordon : 

On  the  whole  it  is  manner  and  not  matter,  treatment 
and  not  theme  that  counts.  Realistic  handling  and  a 
vivid,  semi-slangy,  pseudo-epigrammatic  style  will  ex 
cuse  any  theme,  however  slight.  .  .  .  There  is  every 
thing  in  this  remarkable  book:  slap-stick  farce,  sob 
stuff,  melodrama,  coincidence,  and  Grand  Guignol 
horrors.  There  are  also  three  or  four  good  stories. 
The  collection  has  only  one  thing  in  common — good 
craftsmanship. 

This  is  the  legacy,  then,  which  O.  Henry  has  left 
to  the  short  story. 


54     Side-Lights  on  'American  Literature 


VIII 

He  admitted  his  failure.  In  the  last  weeks  of 
his  life,  the  power  of  wizard  expression  gone  for 
ever,  the  physical  sinking  into  collapse  when  it  should 
have  borne  him  through  thirty  years  more  of  crea 
tive  effort,  came  his  pathetic  cry:  "I  want  to  get 
at  something  bigger.  What  I  have  done  is  child's 
play  to  what  I  can  do,  to  what  I  know  it  is  in  me 
to  do."  And  again  in  connection  with  "The 
Dream,"  that  last  story  of  his,  never  finished:  "I 
want  to  show  the  public  I  can  write  something  new 
— new  for  me,  I  mean — a  story  without  slang,  a 
straightforward  dramatic  plot  treated  in  a  way  that 
will  come  nearer  my  ideal  of  real  story-writing. " 
He  was  planning  a  novel,  "The  story  of  a  man — 
an  individual,  not  a  type,"  as  he  expressed  it.  It 
was  too  late.  What  he  had  written  he  had  written. 

We  may  explain  him  best  perhaps  in  the  terms 
of  his  story  "The  Lost  Blend" :  a  flask  of  Western 
humor — John  Phoenix,  Artemus  Ward ;  a  full  meas 
ure  of  Bret  Harte — sentiment,  theatricality,  melo 
drama;  a  drop  of  Maupassant — constructive  art, 
brilliancy  of  diction,  finesse;  a  dash  of  journalistic 
flashiness  and  after-dinner  anecdote;  and  then — in 
sipid  indeed  all  the  blend  without  this — two  bottles 
of  the  Apollinaris  of  O.  Henry's  peculiar  soul, 


The  Age  of  O.  Henry  55 

and  lo!  the  exhilarating  blend  that  is  intoxicating  a 
generation — "elixir  of  battle,  money,  and  high  life." 

Exhilarating  indeed,  but  a  dangerous  beverage 
for  steady  consumption.  Sadly  does  it  distort  the 
perspective  and  befuddle  the  heart  and  the  soul. 
It  begets  dislike  of  mental  effort,  and  dependence 
solely  upon  thrill  and  picturesque  movement.  It 
is  akin  to  the  moving  pictures  which,  seen  too  often, 
do  to  death  all  thought  and  all  imagination.  A 
college  president  complained  to  me  recently  of  the 
difficulty  of  finding  chapel  speakers  who  would  hold 
the  attention  of  the  students.  "There  must  be 
nothing  abstract/'  he  said;  "everything  must  be  in 
the  concrete.  The  preacher  must  be  hot  from  some 
battle  where  he  has  grappled  with  stirring  problems 
at  first  hand,  and  he  must  present  graphic  pictures 
in  breathless  succession." 

We  need  not  complete  the  connection.  Are  we 
arriving  at  a  period  when  all  literary  art  is  ephemeral, 
a  shallow  period  without  philosophy  of  life  or  moral 
background,  a  period  where  manner  shall  rule  and 
not  matter,  and  brilliancy  is  all  in  all,  a  period,  in 
short,  where  O.  Henry  is  the  crowned  literary 
classic  ? 


A  CRITIC  IN  C  MAJOR 


To  live  in  the  age  of  O.  Henry  is  to  be  aware 
sooner  or  later  of  the  enfant  terrible  of  its  latest 
phase,  the  author  of  "Prejudices."  Opinions  of 
this  phenomenon  run  as  widely  asunder  as  men 
ever  drift.  To  some  he  is  a  diabolical  boy  with  a 
bean-shooter,  amazingly  accurate  of  aim;  to  others 
he  is  Demogorgon  straight  from  hell  with  Orcus 
and  Ades  whose  name  is  Nathan;  to  still  others 
he  is  a  smart  Aleck  mouthing  the  argot  of  the  tribe 
— shall  not  the  editor  of  "The  Smart  Set"  be  smart? 
But  there  is  a  minority  very  respectable  to  whom 
he  is  a  genuine  critic,  the  voice  of  his  era.  A  re 
cent  London  "Athenaeum"  reviewer  has  him  "rapidly 
becoming  the  most  important  critic  in  America." 
That  the  "literati  of  New  York"  and  beyond  are 
fearfully  aware  of  this  high-vocabularied  new  censor 
of  art  and  morals,  ducking  nervously  at  his  very 
shadow,  is  ludicrously  evident.  The  New  York 
"Literary  Review,"  for  instance,  with  a  critic  of 
distinction  for  editor,  has  mentioned  him  or  al 
luded  to  him  on  its  editorial  pages  more  often  than 

56 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  57 

any  other  contemporary.  Is  Mencken  the  typical 
critic  of  the  O.  Henry  age,  the  type  of  critic  that 
journalism  is  evolving — the  critic  of  the  future  ? 

The  man  is  so  recent  an  arrival  that  few  can 
honestly  say  they  have  read  him,  save  in  fragments. 
My  own  experience,  perhaps,  has  been  typical. 
There  was  a  time  not  so  long  ago  when  the  name 
Mencken  called  up  for  me  only  certain  smashing 
reviews,  O.  Henry-like  in  their  general  effect.  I 
smiled  over  them  as  work  keyed  to  "The  Smart 
Set" — smart.  But  the  man  was  not  to  be  dismissed. 
I  found  myself  one  day  with  "Pre faces"  in  my 
hand,  and  opening  by  chance  my  eye  fell  on  this: 
"Huneker  comes  out  of  Philadelphia,  that  depress 
ing  intellectual  slum."  I  opened  again :  "0  Doc- 
tor  admirabilis,  acutus  et  illuminatissimus !  Need 
less  to  say  the  universities  have  not  overlooked  this 
geyser  of  buttermilk :  he  is  an  honourary  A.  M.  of 
Yale" — this  concerning  one  Krehbiel.  Who  would 
lay  down  a  book  as  piquant  as  that  promised  to  be  ? 
I  finished  it  with  gusto,  though  its  ram's-horn 
roared  against  every  wall  I  had  ever  stood  upon.  I 
am  of  the  Puritans  for  six  generations,  I  am  a 
Methodist,  I  am  a  college  professor :  imagine  the 
massacre  of  this  book  in  a  future  number  of  "The 
Smart  Set" !  At  the  end  of  a  furious  charge  upon 
a  woolly  little  lamb  of  a  publication  this  reviewer 
once  worked  himself  up  to  this  thunderous  climax: 


58     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

the  United  States  "is  the  Billy  Sunday  among  the 
nations."  I  was  inclined  after  "Prefaces"  to  say, 
"Yes,  and  H.  L.  Mencken  is  the  Billy  Sunday  among 
her  critics."  He  defends  the  negative  thunderously; 
he  can  out-Billy  Billy  himself.  His  vocabulary 
is  richer.  Consider  such  tremendous  pulpit-thrash 
ings  as  these : 

The  American  people,  taking  them  by  and  large,  are 
the  most  timorous,  sniveling,  poltroonish,  ignominious 
mob  of  serfs  and  goose-steppers  ever  gathered  under 
one  flag  in  Christendom  since  the  fall  of  the  Eastern 
Empire. 

In  the  presence  of  the  Methodist  clergy,  it  is  difficult 
to  avoid  giving  away  to  the  weakness  of  indignation. 
What  one  observes  is  a  horde  of  uneducated  and  in 
flammatory  dunderheads,  eager  for  power,  intolerant 
of  opposition  and  full  of  a  childish  vanity — a  mob  of 
holy  clerks  but  little  raised,  in  intelligence  and  dignity, 
above  the  forlorn  half  wits  whose  souls  they  chronically 
rack.  In  the  whole  United  States  there  is  scarcely  one 
among  them  who  stands  forth  as  a  man  of  sense  and 
information.  Illiterate  in  all  save  the  elementals,  un 
touched  by  the  larger  currents  of  thought,  drunk  with 
their  power  over  dolts,  crazed  by  their  immunity  to 
challenge  by  their  betters,  they  carry  over  into  the  pro 
fessional  class  of  the  country  the  spirit  of  the  most 
stupid  peasantry,  and  degrade  religion  to  the  estate  of 
an  idiotic  phobia.  There  is  not  a  village  in  America 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  59 

in  which  some  such  preposterous  jackass  is  not  in  ir 
ruption. 

The  man  puzzled  me.  Was  he  not  perhaps  a 
phenomenon  of  the  war  period?  I  thought  so 
once ;  his  most  destructive  eruptions  have  been  since 
1914.  A  world  conflict  waged  long  without  quarter 
drives  every  man  to  extremes  of  speech,  very  often 
to  phobia.  Here  was  a  young  man  undoubtedly 
running  amuck.  He  attacked  indiscriminately,  it 
seemed  to  me,  like  a  typhoon  in  a  jungle.  He  did 
nothing  but  destroy.  After  me  the  deluge !  Every 
cherished  ideal,  every  hero,  every  idol,  every  sweet 
delusion,  our  whole  America,  "a  nation  of  third- 
class  men" — he  damned  with  a  crackle  of  superla 
tives.  Note  the  range  and  execution  of  his  guns : 
This  of  Virginia,  the  mother  of  Southern  States : 

Her  education  has  sunk  to  the  Baptist  seminary 
level ;  not  a  single  contribution  to  human  knowledge 
has  come  out  of  her  colleges  in  twenty-five  years ;  she 
spends  less  than  half  upon  her  common  schools,  per 
capita,  than  any  northern  state  spends.  In  brief,  an 
intellectual  Gobi  or  Lapland.  Urbanity,  politesse, 
chivalry  ?  Go  to !  It  was  in  Virginia  that  they  in 
vented  the  device  of  searching  for  contraband  whisky 
in  women's  underwear. 

This  of  Roosevelt,  and  written  in  the  period  of 
laudation  just,  following  his  death ; 


60     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

A  glorified  longshoreman  engaged  eternally  in  clean 
ing  out  bar-rooms — and  not  too  proud  to  gouge  when 
the  inspiration  came  to  him,  or  to  bite  in  the  clinches, 
or  to  oppose  the  relatively  fragile  brass  knuckles  of 
the  code  with  chair-legs,  bung-starters,  cuspidors,  demiu 
johns,  and  ice-picks. 

Are  you  a  Puritan?     Read  this: 

The  Puritan,  for  all  his  pretensions,  is  the  worst  of 
materialists.  Passed  though  his  sordid  and  unimagina 
tive  mind,  even  the  stupendous  romance  of  sex  is  re 
duced  to  a  disgusting  transaction  in  physiology.  As 
artist  he  is  thus  hopeless ;  as  well  expect  an  auctioneer 
to  qualify  for  the  Sistine  Chapel  choir.  All  he  ever 
achieves,  taking  pen  or  brush  in  hand,  is  a  feeble 
burlesque  of  his  betters,  all  of  whom,  by  his  hog's 
theology,  are  doomed  to  hell. 

And  did  you  ever  review  a  book,  or  enjoy  a  book 
review  ?     Behold  yourself : 

Consider  the  solemn  ponderosities  of  the  pious  old 
maids,  male  and  female,  who  write  book  reviews  for 
the  newspapers.  Here  we  have  a  heavy  pretension  to 
culture,  a  campus  cocksureness,  a  laborious  righteous 
ness — but  of  sound  aesthetic  understanding,  of  alert 
ness  and  hospitality  to  ideas,  not  a  trace.  The  normal 
American  book  reviewer,  indeed,  is  an  elderly  virgin, 
a  superstitious  bluestocking,  an  apostle  of  Vassar 
Kultur;  and  her  customary  attitude  of  mind  is  one  of 
fascinated  horror.  (The  Hamilton  Wright  Mabie 
complex!  The  "white  list"  of  novels!) 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  61 

Let  us  turn  to  a  more  universal  theme,  the  poet's 
dream  of  romantic  love: 

The  business  of  poetry,  remember,  is  to  set  up  a 
sweet  denial  of  the  harsh  facts  that  confront  all  of 
us — to  soothe  us  in  our  agonies  with  emollient  words 
— in  brief,  to  lie  sonorously  and  reassuringly.  Well, 
what  is  the  worst  curse  of  life?  Answer;  the  abomin 
able  magnetism  that  draws  unlikes  and  incompatibles 
into  delirious  and  intolerable  conjunction — the  kinetic 
over-stimulation  called  love. 

And  again: 

The  lover  sees  with  an  eye  that  is  both  opaque  and 
out  of  focus.  Thus  he  begins  the  familiar  process  of 
editing  and  improving  his  girl.  Features  and  char 
acteristics  that,  observed  in  cold  blood,  might  have 
quickly  aroused  his  most  active  disgust  are  now  seen 
through  a  rose-tinted  fog,  like  drabs  in  a  musical 
comedy.  The  lover  ends  by  being  almost  anaesthetic 
to  disgust.  While  the  spell  lasts  his  lady  could  shave 
her  head  or  take  to  rubbing  snuff,  or  scratch  her  leg 
at  a  communion  service,  or  smear  her  hair  with  bear's 
grease,  and  yet  not  disgust  him.  Here  the  paralysis  of 
the  faculties  is  again  chiefly  physical — a  matter  of  ob 
scure  secretions,  of  shifting  pressure,  of  metabolism. 
Nature  is  at  her  tricks.  The  fever  of  love  is  upon 
its  victim.  His  guard  down,  he  is  little  more  than  a 
pathetic  automaton. 

And  when  it  comes  to  marriage : 


62     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

A  man,  when  his  marriage  enters  upon  the  stage  of 
regularity  and  safety,  gets  used  to  his  wife  as  he  might 
get  used  to  a  tannery  next  door,  and  vice  versa.  .  .  . 
Who  are  happy  in  marriage?  Those  with  so  little, 
imagination  that  they  cannot  picture  a  better  state,  and 
those  so  shrewd  that  they  prefer  quiet  slavery  to  hope 
less  rebellion. 

Even  the  Ten  Commandments  are  not  immune : 

They  [Shaw's  platitudes]  are  as  bullet-proof  in  es 
sence  as  the  multiplication  table,  and  vastly  more  bul 
let-proof  than  the  Ten  Commandments  or  the  Con 
stitution  of  the  United  States. 

But  it  is  the  condition  of  American  art  and  litera 
ture  that  especially  infuriates  him.  This  at  random : 

Find  me  a  second-rate  American  in  any  of  the  arts 
and  I'll  find  you  his  master  and  prototype  among  third, 
fourth,  or  fifth-rate  Englishmen. 

America  is  for  him  a  land  cursed  with  third-rate- 
ness,  with  morals,  with  sentimentalism,  with  uplift 
mania,  with  Pollyannaism.  Of  Henry  Sydnor  Har 
rison,  "merchant  of  mush" : 

He  is  touched  by  the  delusion  that  he  has  a  mission 
to  make  life  sweeter,  to  preach  the  Finer  Things,  to 
radiate  Gladness.  What!  More  gladness?  Another 
volt  or  two  and  all  civilized  adults  will  join  the  Italians 
and  Jugo-Slavs  in  their  headlong  hegira.  A  few  more 
amperes,  and  the  land  will  be  abandoned  to  the  Jews, 
the  ex-Confederates,  and  the  Bolsheviki. 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  63 

These  are  but  a  half-dozen  of  his  bloody  angles : 
one  might  with  small  searching  find  yet  extremer 
damnations  of  the  regime  of  the  democratic  hive. 
He  has  prodded  every  hornet  in  the  American 
swarm.  One  of  the  "belligerent  young  generation/' 
diagnoses  Professor  Sherman,  and  that  was  my  own 
classification  once.  To  every  new  generation  the 
fundamentals  of  forty  years  before  seem  inadequate : 
that  is  an  axiom.  When  the  baton  of  the  dead 
master  falls  into  the  hands  of  the  new  young  leader 
he  at  once  changes  the  balance  of  saxophones  and 
trombones  and  banjos.  Periods  in  literature  are 
but  generations.  The  hymns  of  the  fathers  are  al 
ways  "pennyroyal"  to  the  sons;  jazz  is  always  the 
music  of  the  future  and  vers  libre  its  poetry.  The 
cry  of  adolescence  and  later  adolescence  is  always 
revolutionary.  Who  so  "pennyroyal"  now  as 
Wordsworth?  Yet  the  "Lyrical  Ballads"  to  the 
thoughtful  inheritors  of  the  eighteenth  century  tra 
ditions  were  the  extreme  of  intolerable  jazz.  Shelley 
to  the  critics  born  before  the  French  Revolution 
wrote  "drivelling  idiocy  run  mad."  He  was  eight 
een  when  he  produced  his  "The  Necessity  of  Athe 
ism"  :  he  was  not  much  older  when  he  wrote  his 
"Defense  of  Poetry."  New  periods  in  literature 
always,  from  Sydney's  day  to  Frank  Norris's,  have 
been  ushered  in  with  defenses  of  new  literary  creeds 
and  appeals  for  a  return  to  true  art,  as  Preraphael- 


64     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

ism  was  supposed  to  be  a  return  to  the  naturalism 
that  prevailed  before  Raphael  had  cast  it  into  mold 
that  had  become  classic.  And  these  blasts  invar 
iably  have  been  blown  by  men  under  thirty.  The 
theory  is  good :  it  explains  Mencken. 

And  then  I  found  that  Mencken  is  forty-two  years 
old — he  was  born  in  1880:  it  gave  me  a  sensation 
when  I  saw  that  on  the  jacket  of  a  book.  It  scat 
tered  my  theories  like  an  old  letter  discovered  by  a 
biographer.  Then  I  did  what  I  should  have  done 
at  the  start:  I  read  Mencken,  all  the  Mencken  I 
could  procure,  and  when  I  had  read  him  I  under 
stood.  I  am  clear  now.  In  the  presence  of  all 
his  work  the  workman  stands  revealed. 


ii 

The  man  began  as  a  lyrist.  At  twenty-one  he 
was  Henry  Louis  Mencken,  author  of  a  single 
book,  a  dilettante  little  volume  with  youth  writ 
large  on  every  page,  including  the  title-page,  which 
ran:  "Ventures  into  Verse,  Being  Various  Bal 
lads,  Ballades,  Rondeaux,  Triolets,  Songs,  Qua 
trains,  Odes  and  Roundels  all  rescued  from  the 
Potters'  Field,  of  Old  Files  and  here  Given  Decent 
Burial  [Peace  to  Their  Ashes],  by  Henry  Louis 
Mencken  with  Illustrations  &  Other  Things  By 
Charles  S.  Gordon  &  John  Siegel.  .  .  .  First  (and 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  65 

Last)'  Edition."  At  the  very  opening  of  the  vol 
ume  there  is  a 

PRELIMINARY   REBUKE 

Don't  shoot  the  pianist;  he's  doing  his  best. 
Gesundheit !  Knockers  !  have  your  fling ! 
Unto  an  Anvilfest  you  're  bid ; 
It  took  a  lot  of  hammering, 
To  build  Old  Cheops'  Pyramid! 

The  first  third  of  the  book  is  made  up  of  ballads  in 
the  vein  of  Kipling: 

Prophet  of  brawn  and  bravery ! 
Bard  of  the  fighting  man! 

It  is  good  work:  it  catches  to  the  full  the  spirit 
of  the  master :  Kipling  himself  might  have  writ 
ten  the  ringing  anthems  that  fill  a  dozen  pages. 
Mingled  with  his  "ballads  of  the  fleet"  they  might 
deceive  the  pundits. 

The  rest  of  the  book  is  prevailing  in  lighter  vein, 
vers  de  societe,  French  forms  lightly  fingered,  love 
lyrics  in  adolescent  moods.  The  technique  for  the 
most  part  is  exquisite.  Bunner  for  instance  never 
wrote  a  more  sparkling  bit  than  this  "Frivolous 
Rondeau" : 

A  lyric  verse  1 11  make  for  you, 
Fair  damsel  that  the  many  woo, 
'Twill  be  a  sonnet  on  your  fan — 


66     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

That  aid  to  love  from  quaint  Japan — 
And  "true"  will  rime  with  "eyes  of  blue." 

Ah!  me,  if  you  but  only  knew 
The  toil  of  setting  out  to  hew 

From  words — as  I  shall  try  to  do — 
A  lyric  verse. 

Fleet  metric  ghosts  I  must  pursue, 

And  dim  rime  apparitions,  too — 
But  yet,  't  is  joyfully  I  scan, 
And  reckon  rimes  and  think  and  plan 

For  there  's  no  cheaper  present  than 
A  lyric  verse. 

Some  of  the  "Songs  of  the  City"  are  richly  original, 
but  in  view  of  the  later  Mencken  the  lyric  "II  Pen- 
seroso"  is  more  significant : 

Love's  song  is  sung  in  ragtime  now 

And  kisses  sweet  are  syncopated  joys, 

The  tender  sigh,  the  melancholy  moan, 

The  soft  reproach  and  yearning  up-turned  gaze 

Have  passed  into  the  caves  without  the  gates, 

And  in  their  place,  to  serve  love's  purposes, 

Bold  profanations  from  the  music  halls 

Are  working  overtime. 

The  poet  of  twenty-one  already  was  passing  into 
the  sear  and  yellow  leaf.  Romantic  love  was  made 
in  knightly  fashion  once  with  stately  vows  and  tall 
vocabulary,  but  now,  alas, 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  67 

Now  to  his  girl  the  ragtime  lover  says, 

The  while  he  strums  his  marked-down  mandolin, 

"Is  you  ma  lady  love?"  and  she,  his  girl, 

Makes  answer  thus:     "Ah  is!" 

Gadzooks !  it  makes  me  sad ! 

That  any  one — except  me,  and  that  recently — 
ever  read  a  line  of  the  book  there  is  no  evidence. 
Evidently  it  is  still  considered  valuable  in  certain 
quarters :  the  only  copy  in  New  York  City,  so  far 
as  I  could  discover,  was  stolen  from  the  public 
library  a  year  ago.  The  book  is  extinct,  almost  to 
tally  extinct.  When  it  was  issued  it  made  no  more 
impression  upon  the  reading  public  than  if  it  were 
a  schoolgirl's  yearnings  published  by  Badger.  The 
title  was  effeminate  and  timid ;  apologetic  even. 
Had  it  been,  say,  "Hell  after  8  115,"  some  poor  devil 
of  a  newspaper  reviewer  might  have  glimpsed  it  in 
the  heap,  but  "Ventures  into  Verse" — it  is  to  be 
rated  in  literary  statistics  as  still-born.  Yet  show 
me  a  more  promising  bit  of  poetic  workmanship  put 
to  press  that  year  by  an  American. 

Even  the  poet  must  live.  Henry  Louis  Mencken 
became,  of  all  things,  a  reporter  on  a  city  daily; 
a  Baltimore  daily.  The  muse  drooped  and  faded 
and  disappeared.  Journalism  is  the  antonym  of 
poetry,  as  completely  as  city  is  the  antonym  of 
country.  To  set  a  young  lyric  poet  to  gathering 
gutter-sweepings  and  offal  for  the  maw  of  the 


68     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

"Gomorrah  Gazette"  of  to-day  is  like  harnessing  an 
aeroplane  to  a  swill-cart.  Imagine  a  poet,  say  Swin 
burne,  put  to  slavery  under  an  American  city  editor 
whose  ideal  of  a  perfect  paper  is  a  front  page 
covered,  half  of  it,  Jwith  red  block  letters  ,'and 
screamers.  Send  him  out  for  material,  say  to  the 
East  Side.  Contrast  if  you  can  what  he  might 
bring  back  with  this  recent  picture  of  Swinburne  by 
Max  Beerbohm :  "He  spoke  to  us  of  his  walk ; 
spoke  not  in  the  strain  of  a  man  who  had  been  tak 
ing  his  daily  exercise  on  Putney  Heath,  but  rather 
in  that  of  a  Peri  who  had  at  long  last  been  suffered 
to  pass  through  Paradise.  And  rather  than  that  he 
spoke,  would  I  say  that  he  cooingly  and  flutingly 
sang  of  his  experience.  The  wonders  of  this 
morning's  wind  and  sun  and  clouds  were  expressed 
in  a  flow  of  words  so  right  and  sentences  so  per 
fectly  balanced  that  they  would  have  seemed  pedantic 
had  they  not  been  clearly  as  spontaneous  as  the 
wordless  notes  of  a  bird  in  song."  Swinburne  was 
a  poet  and  not  a  journalist. 

Though  a  reporter  Mencken  was  still  a  poet,  but 
he  was  in  protest  now,  in  plaintive  protest.  At 
twenty-one,  despite  the  newspaper  game,  he  was  still 
not  wholly  disillusioned.  Kipling  he  called  "Mas 
ter,"  but  he  bemoaned  his  lapse  into  twentieth- 
centuryism.  The  poet  of  his  dream  was  turning 
into  "poetaster,"  but  perhaps  it  was  not  too  late  to 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  69 

recall  him.  He  voiced  his  disappointment  in  a 
"Ballade  of  Protest."  I  wish  I  had  space  for  it 
all: 

Sing  us  again  in  rhymes  that  ring, 
In  Master- Voice  that  lives  and  thrills; 

Sing  us  again  of  wind  and  wing, 
Of  temple  bells  and  jungle  trills : 
And  if  your  Pegasus  ever  wills 

To  lead  you  down  some  other  way, 
Go  bind  him  in  his  older  thills — 

Sing  us  again  of  Mandalay. 

Master,  regard  the  plaint  we  bring, 
And  hearken  to  our  prayer,  we  pray, 

Lay  down  your  law  and  sermoning — 
Sing   us   again   of    Mandalay. 

The  newspaper  game  is  as  swiftly  changing  in 
its  players  and  their  positions  as  collegiate  foot-ball. 
Youngsters  are  continually  dropping  from  the  line 
up,  or  soaring  after  intense  periods  into  specialized 
leadership.  After  four  years  young  Mencken  was 
city  editor — this  in  his  native  Baltimore — and  a 
year  later  he  was  dramatic  critic.  No  more  poetry ; 
criticism  now,  criticism  for  the  theater  pages :  actors, 
actresses,  first  nights,  new  plays.  But  the  young 
critic  reporter's  ambition  soared  above  the  news 
paper  column.  In  1905 — he  was  twenty-five  then 
and  sensitive  for  revolt — he  essayed  a  volume  of 


70     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

dramatic  criticism,  a  study  of  the  new  Heliogabalus 
of  the  British  Parnassus,  Bernard  Shaw,  the  first 
full-length  picture  to  be  drawn  of  the  man.  Bril 
liant  work  for  a  youngster,  but  it  was  mild  of  tone 
and  it  was  received  mildly.  Its  neglect  set  its  au 
thor  to  thinking,  and  the  final  result  was  revolution 
ary.  Henry  Louis  Mencken  became  H.  L.  Men 
cken.  In  a  moment  of  confession,  rare  indeed  for 
the  man,  he  has  told  us  of  the  evolution:  "As 
piring,  toward  the  end  of  my  nonage,  to  the  black 
robes  of  a  dramatic  critic,  I  took  counsel  of  an  an 
cient  whose  service  went  back  to  the  days  of  Our 
American  Cousin,  asking  him  what  qualities  were 
chiefly  demanded  by  the  craft,"  and  the  ancient 
told  him  above  all  things  else  to  be  interesting: 
"all  else  is  dross."  It  would  do  him,  he  conceded, 
no  real  harm  to  read  the  books  of  the  great  critics  or 
even  the  works  of  masters  like  Shakspere, 

"But,  unless  you  can  make  people  read  your  criti 
cisms,  you  may  as  well  shut  up  your  shop.  And  the 
only  way  to  make  them  read  you  is  to  give  them  some 
thing  exciting." 

"You  suggest,  then,"  I  ventured,  "a  certain  feroc 
ity?" 

"I  do,"  replied  my  venerable  friend.  "Read  George 
Henry  Lewes,  and  see  how  he  did  it — sometimes  with 
a  bladder  on  a  string,  usually  with  a  meat-ax.  Knock 
somebody  in  the  head  every  day — if  not  an  actor,  then 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  71 

the  author,  and  if  not  the  author,  then  the  manager. 
And  if  the  play  and  the  performance  are  perfect,  then 
excoriate  someone  who  does  n't  think  so — a  fellow 
critic,  a  rival  manager,  the  unappreciative  public.  But 
make  it  hearty;  make  it  hot!  the  public  would  rather 
be  the  butt  itself  than  to  have  no  butt  in  the  ring.  That 
is  rule  No.  i  of  American  psychology — and  of  English 
too,  but  more  especially  of  American.  You  must  give 
a  good  show  to  get  a  crowd,  and  a  good  show  means 
one  with  slaughter  in  it.".  .  .  The  advice  of  my  an 
cient  counselor  kept  turning  over  and  over  in  my 
memory,  and  as  chance  offered  I  began  to  act  upon  it, 
and  whenever  I  acted  upon  it  I  found  that  it  worked. 

This  is  illuminating,  but  it  explains  only  in  part. 
The  later  Mencken  unquestionably  lays  about  him 
as  ferociously  as  even  his  ancient  friend  could  have 
desired,  but  the  reader  of  all  of  him  is  impressed 
with  the  fact  that  his  onslaughts  are  not  yellow- 
journalistic,  not  indiscriminate  and  made  for  mere 
sensational  advertisement.  He  is  not  a  typhoon 
boxing  the  compass  with  his  fury  and  tearing  the 
whole  jungle  in  brainless  rage  or  assumed  rage. 
His  blasts  are  all  in  the  same  direction — trade  winds, 
furious  at  times,  but  always  to  the  westward.  To 
read  him  is  to  discover  that  after  he  had  finished 
with  Shaw — Shaw  the  windy,  cock-sure,  icono 
clastic,  with  eye  to  the  box-office,  perfect  type  of 
the  critic  described  by  the  ancient  who  dated  from 


72     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

"Our  American  Cousin" — he  next  discovered  (most 
unthespianic  of  discoveries)  that  devil's  Messiah, 
the  prophet  Nietzsche,  of  the  German  Empire  that 
once  was.  And  he  read  Nietzsche  in  the  bare  Ger 
man,  and  absorbed  Nietzsche,  and  then  in  two  di 
verse  volumes  he  translated  Nietzsche  and  explained 
him  and  rhapsodized  him  to  an  America  which, 
save  for  a  few  scattered  PH.  D.'s  made  in  Bonn 
and  Baesl,  had  never  heard  his  name  even,  when 
indeed  even  the  general  run  of  the  German  people 
knew  no  more  about  him  than,  to  quote  Mencken's 
own  words,  "they  knew  about  sanitary  plumbing  or 
the  theory  of  least  squares/'  And  he  did  it  bril 
liantly,  comprehendingly — I  know  of  no  treatment 
more  illuminating.  But  no  man  in  the  twenties 
ever  plunges  into  that  maelstrom  of  dogma  that  has 
swallowed  empires,  to  emerge  the  man  he  was. 
After  Nietzsche,  no  longer  was  Mencken  poet,  no 
longer  was  he  critic:  he  was  a  prophet  like  his 
master,  a  prophet  with  an  evangel  that  the  "mob," 
the  "rabble,"  "the  proletariat,"  the  "plain  people" 
shall  never  understand,  shall  shudder  at  indeed  al 
ways,  and  hoot  at,  and  brand  with  "Antichrist." 

Whatever  else  Professor  Nietzsche  may  have  been, 
critic  he  certainly  was  not;  and  however  rhapsodic 
he  may  have  been  at  times,  and  dithyrambic  and 
seer-like  of  tone,  he  certainly  was  not  a  poet.  He 
was  a  prophet  (whether  devil-inspired  or  not  is  an- 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  73 

other  question;  whether  sound  at  philosophic  base 
or  not  is  a  theme  for  another  variety  of  investiga 
tion) — he  was  a  prophet,  a  voice,  a  speaker-out  to 
his  generation.  Prophets  have  always  excoriated 
and  seared  their  contemporaries.  Consider  the  tor 
rent  poured  out  by  Amos :  "Hear  this,  O  you  cows, 
O  you  women  of  Bashan,  who  live  softly  upon  the 
toil  of  the  poor.  .  .  .  You  shall  be  driven  straight 
out  through  the  breaches  in  the  wall,  every  cow  of 
you.  .  .  ."  And  there  was  the  Baptist  "O  genera 
tion  of  vipers,"  and,  to  come  nearer  home,  there  was 
Carlyle — voices  in  the  wilderness  thundering  aloud, 
The  day  of  the  Lord  is  here!  The  methods  of 
Nietzsche  were  the  methods  of  all  prophets  of  wrath. 
Thus  Mencken  describes  his  arraignment  of  his  own 
Germany : 

No  epithet  was  too  outrageous,  no  charge  was  too 
far-fetched,  no  manipulation  or  interpretation  of  evi 
dence  was  too  daring,  to  enter  into  his  ferocious  indict 
ment.  He  accused  the  Germans  of  stupidity,  super- 
stitiousness,  and  silliness;  of  a  chronic  weakness  for 
dodging  issues,  a  fatuous  ''barn-yard"  and  "green-graz 
ing"  contentment ;  of  yielding  supinely  to  the  commands 
and  exactions  of  a  clumsy  and  unintelligent  govern 
ment;  of  degrading  education  to  the  low  level  of  mere 
cramming  and  examination-passing ;  of  a  congenital  in 
ability  to  understand  and  absorb  the  culture  of  other 
peoples,  and  particularly  the  culture  of  the  French ;  of 


74     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

a  boorish  bumptiousness  and  an  ignorant,  ostrich-like 
complacency;  of  a  systematic  hostility  to  men  of  gen 
ius,  whether  in  art,  science,  or  philosophy  (so  that 
Schopenhauer,  dead  in  1860,  remained  "the  last  Ger 
man  who  was  a  European  event")  ;  of  a  slavish  de 
votion  to  "the  two  great  European  narcotics,  alcohol 
and  Christianity";  of  a  profound  beeriness,  a  spiritual 
dyspepsia,  a  puerile  mysticism,  an  old-womanish  pet 
tiness,  and  ineradicable  liking  for  "the  obscure,  evolv 
ing,  crepuscular,  damp  and  shrouded." 

Whether  it  was  written  in  hate  of  Germany  or 
in  love,  all  this  torrent  of  vituperation  had  with 
Nietzsche  one  single  direction :  every  word  was  a 
blow  at  what  he  considered  German  weaknesses. 
Again  in  the  words  of  Mencken: 

Even  its  ["Thus  Spake  Zarathustra's]  lingering 
sneers  at  the  Germans  strike  at  weakness  which  the 
more  thoughtful  Germans  were  themselves  beginning 
to  admit,  combat,  and  remedy.  It  is  a  riotous  affirma 
tion  of  race-efficiency,  a  magnificent  defiance  of  destiny, 
a  sublime  celebration  of  ambition. 

We  are  on  the  right  track  now:  the  problem  of 
H.  L.  Mencken  is  the  problem  of  a  Nietzschean  in 
the  heart  of  the  American  democracy.  What  weak 
nesses  will  he  find  from  the  point  of  view  of  "blood 
and  iron,"  "be  hard,"  "death  to  the  under  dog,"  "not 
virtue,  but  efficiency,"  "the  weak  and  the  botched 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  75 

must  perish,  they  should  be  helped  to  perish" — what 
will  he  find  milk-and-waterish  in  this  paradise  of 
the  proletariat?  Answer:  Read  "Prejudices." 
These  fulminJations  seemingly  against  all  things 
American  are  not  random  shots,  diabolical  bombs 
thrown  by  an  enemy  of  the  republic:  they  are 
prophet  blasts,  irritating,  maddening,  arousing  the 
thoughtful,  perhaps,  to  a  conception  of  the  America 
to  be.  The  very  too-muchness  of  his  protesting 
classifies  him:  his  very  violence  is  "a  sublime  cele 
bration  of  ambition."  Those  who  in  rage  reply  to 
him  from  sheltered  corners  of  his  continent-broad 
battle-field  miss  his  whole  meaning.  To  rush  ex 
citedly  to  the  aid  of  Roosevelt  assaulted  by  this 
most  honest  of  Rooseveltians,  to  cry  out  in  horror 
that  the  altars  of  puritanism  have  been  defiled  by 
this  most  jealous  of  all  Puritans,  to  shriek  "Anti 
christ"  at  one  who  sneers  only  at  un-Christlikeness 
(in  all  of  his  writings  I  have  ever  read  I  have  found 
no  innuendo  directed  at  Christ  himself),  to  stone 
him  as  a  vandal  when  he  breaks  open  whited  sepul- 
chers  and  discloses  corruption  in  the  heart  that  had 
vaunted  itself  holy — rebuttal  like  this  is  really  con 
fession.  I  picture  that  inner  padded  den  of  the 
Baltimore  Carlyle  as  a  place  of  sardonic  laughter. 
One  does  not  reply  with  logic  and  with  therefores 
when  one's  mother  or  one's  wife  is  defamed  by  the 
prurient-souled,  neither  does  one  defend  the  Ten 


76     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Commandments  or  the  moral  laws  that  have  made 
civilization — imperfect  though  it  be  as  yet — superior 
to  life  under  jungle  codes  wherever  that  jungle 
may  be.  In  his  heat  the  Nietzschean  hurler  of 
taunts  goes  too  far;  always  he  is  too  strong — one 
may  wonder  at  times  what  the  Menckenian  "News 
From  Nowhere"  will  really  be  like  when  he  ceases 
to  be  merely  destructive  and  formulates  his  creed 
— but  at  present  the  totality  of  his  blasts  disturbs 
little  save  weaknesses. 


in 

But  Mencken  has  been  branded  with  the  herd- 
mark  "critic" — literary  critic.  All  the  reviews  I 
have  ever  read  of  him,  some  of  them  European, 
classify  him  only  as  a  critic.  And  critic  he  cer 
tainly  is  not.  To  add  him  to  the  number  of  the 
real  critics — not  book  reviewers;  not  book  journal 
ists;  not  literary  muck-rakers — would  require  the 
same  major  treatment  that  were  necessary  if  O. 
Henry  were  to  be  admitted  to  the  company  of  the 
short  story  writers:  the  rules  would  need  to  be 
rewritten.  That  he  has  the  apparatus  for  criti 
cism,  a  dazzling  knowledge  of  books  and  writers 
and  movements  and  technique,  no  man  may  deny; 
that  he  has  a  brilliancy  of  style  when  he  wills,  an 
O.  Henry-like  originality  of  phrase  and  illustra- 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  77 

tion  and  diction,  a  remarkable  precision  and  range 
in  the  use  of  words,  is  evident  even  to  sophomores; 
that  he  is  curiously  learned  in  many  arts  and  many 
literatures,  saturated  especially  with  all  that  has 
poured  from  the  presses  of  America  for  two  decades, 
is  as  true  as  it  is  exceptional.  I  know  of  no  man 
to-day  more  brilliantly  equipped  for  critical  ex 
pression. 

But  his  defects  are  so  radical  and  his  whole  at 
titude  toward  literary  art  so  uncritical  that  he  must 
be  ruled  out  as  a  critic  if  one  is  to  be  governed  at 
all  by  any  of  those  canons  which  have  been  held 
axiomatic  since  Aristotle.  He  has  given  us  at 
full  length  his  own  conception  of  the  critic.  It  is 
the  proper  approach  to  this  side  of  H.  L.  Mencken. 
Let  us  examine  it. 

It  is  impossible  for  the  true  critic  to  be  a  gentle 
man.  I  use  the  word  in  its  common  meaning,  to  wit, 
a  man  who  avoids  offence  against  punctilio,  who  is 
averse  to  an  indulgence  in  personalities,  who  is  ready 
to  sacrifice  truth  to  good  manners  and  good  form,  and 
who  has  respect  and  sympathy  for  the  feelings  of  his 
inferiors.  Criticism  is  intrinsically  and  inevitably  a 
boorish  art.  Its  practitioner  takes  color  from  it,  and 
his  gentlemanliness — if  he  has  any — promptly  becomes 
lost  in  its  interpretative  labyrinths.  The  critic  who 
is  a  gentleman  is  no  critic.  He  is  merely  the  dancing 
master  of  an  art. 


78     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Strange  astigmatism  this,  the  flippant  definition 
of  a  reviewer  whose  life  has  been  spent  in  the  muddy 
roil  of  current  books.  To  him  a  blast  in  "The 
Smart  Set"  aimed  at  an  effusion  not  yet  dry  in 
its  ink  is  actually  criticism.  Substitute  "news 
paper  book  reviewer"  for  "critic"  and  there  is  a 
grain  of  truth  in  this  definition — even  a  freshman 
knows  that  criticism  should  be  fearless  and  honest 
whether  aimed  at  a  book  or  a  foot-ball  coach — but 
with  this  single  reservation  the  thing  is  puerile. 
It  is  enlightening,  however:  it  illumines  its  author. 
But  who  is  Mencken  that  he  should  be  lighted  up 
for  our  inspection?  Were  this  not  larger  than 
Mencken  the  thing  might  be  hooted  at  and  thrown 
forever  into  the  rubbish,  but  the  man  is  a  type : 
in  studying  him,  as  in  studying  O.  Henry  and  Jack 
London,  we  are  studying  a  period,  we  are  studying 
our  own  times. 

There  is  a  strange  duality  in  Mencken  just  as 
there  was  in  O.  Henry:  good  material,  but  warped 
somehow  beyond  all  straightening;  sharp  eyes  be 
yond  the  average  of  sharpness  often,  but  strabismic 
even  to  ludicrousness.  The  disease  of  Mencken, 
the  disease  of  a  growing  area  of  our  writing  gener 
ation,  might  be  diagnosed  from  this  definition  of 
"critic"  alone:  obsession  by  contemporaneousness. 
It  is  a  city  disease  gendered  by  the  lack  of  moral 
and  intellectual  sanitation  in  journalistic  centers  and 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  79 

by  the  steady  diet  of  one  thing  never  varied.  It  is 
a  disease  that  lays  hold  inevitably  upon  the  news 
paper  worker  who  remains  for  any  length  of  time  in 
the  miasma  of  this  most  deadly  of  all  extra-hazardous 
trades.  The  phosphorus  of  it  eats  into  the  bones 
and  turns  all  the  sky  to  mucus.  The  name  of  it? 
Call  it  the  "yellows."  The  blight  that  is  upon  our 
literature  to-day  comes  from  the  fact  that  the  greater 
number  of  its  practitioners  have  at  one  time  or 
another  been  gassed  in  this  deadly  area  and  ren 
dered  unbalanced,  unable  thereafter  to  see  life 
steadily  or  to  see  it  whole. 

The  veteran  reporter  sneers  at  life.  He  has  seen 
the  feet  of  clay  of  all  our  idols,  he  has  dined  with 
the  valets  of  all  our  heroes,  he  has  learned  the 
price  of  all  our  statesmen,  he  has  viewed  from  with 
in  the  ropes  the  totality  of  human  sordidness  and 
criminality  and  bestialness,  he  has  visited  the  side 
shows  of  all  the  Vanity  Fairs,  and  found  Beelzebub 
supreme.  He  has  seen  everything,  he  has  been 
everywhere :  he  is  disillusioned,  he  is  blase,  he  is 
cock-sure,  he  is  stripped  of  belief  in  anything  human 
or  divine — he  sneers.  If  he  writes  a  book  he 
entitles  it,  as  did  Mencken,  "Damn!" — life  for 
him  becomes  a  hunt  for  synonyms  for  "Damn!" 
He  is  not  a  pessimist,  for  a  pessimist  is  an  honest 
philosopher  who  has  examined  all  the  sides  of  life, 
has  weighed  coldly  both  the  good  and  the  bad, 


80     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

and  has  found  the  evil  the  weightier :  he  is  not  a 
pessimist,  he  is  a  man  who  has  lost  his  shadow,  he 
is  an  apoplectic  victim,  one  side  abnormally  devel 
oped,  keen  even  to  the  miraculous;  the  other  side 
shriveled  into  nothingness.  To  such  a  man  the 
world  is  out  of  balance.  To  the  jaundiced  the  whole 
world  is  yellow. 

Imagine  a  journalist  writing  criticism;  imagine 
Babe  Ruth  writing  epics.  His  whole  training  has 
been  centered  in  the  contemporaneous,  and  criticism 
demands  perspective;  he  has  practised  only  upon 
the  loud  trumpets  and  the  megaphone,  and  criticism 
is  a  thing  of  subtle  blendings  and  rare  shadings; 
he  has  been  trained  to  search  only  for  the  excep 
tional,  the  instantly  arresting,  the  sensational,  and 
criticism  demands  as  its  very  soul  the  entire  truth. 
Criticism  that  deals  with  contemporaries,  ruled 
Jules  Lemaitre,  is  not  criticism  at  all :  it  is  conversa 
tion.  Conversation  about  one's  contemporaries,  if 
one  is  a  boor,  is  inevitably  boorish :  it  makes  enemies, 
in  certain  regions  it  makes  duels.  But  criticism 
makes  not  enemies.  Criticism  is  a  science  and  science 
is  calm,  science  is  gentlemanly  in  the  sense  that  the 
word  "gentleman"  is  used  outside  of  newspaper 
offices  and  Soviets.  To  say  that  it  is  impossible 
for  a  true  critic  to  be  a  gentleman  is  to  classify  one's 
self.  Is  the  surgeon  who  cuts  cruelly  in  order  to 
save,  is  he  a  boor?  May  not  a  diagnostician  tell 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  81 

in  perfect  calmness  and  in  all  gentleness  facts  about 
your  physical  condition  that  will  bring  you  even 
thoughts  of  suicide?  Is  the  chemist  who  makes  an 
analysis  that  may  drive  a  fertilizer  factory  out  of 
business  a  boor  while  he  is  doing  his  work?  Is 
the  scientist  inevitably  a  boor?  And  is  not  the 
critic  a  scientist?  If  one  writes  of  the  art  of 
Shelley  or  of  Rossetti  can  not  one  still  have  re 
spect  and  sympathy  for  the  feelings  of  one's  supe 
riors  ? 

Unscientific,  an  impressionist  ruled  by  his  preju 
dices,  Mencken  is  not  a  critic  at  all.  He  is  a  bull  in 
the  literary  china-shop,  he  is  the  champion  of  the 
literary  off-side :  let  a  book  be  damned  by  the  prudes 
and  he  rushes  blindly  and  furiously  to  gore  its  ene 
mies.  He  is  the  leading  champion  of  his  fellow- 
journalist  Dreiser,  defending  him  because  the  prud 
ish  condemned  him.  "I  became  involved  in  Drei 
ser's  cause,"  he  says,  "largely  because  of  the  efforts 
of  the  Comstocks  to  work  up  a  case  against  him." 
He  is  to  be  classed  not  with  the  critics  but  with  the 
literary  free-lances  with  high-powered  vocabularies, 
with  the  newspaper  columnists,  with  the  monthly  ap 
praisers  of  the  real  estate  of  Parnassus — up  to  date 
to  the  minute,  cock-sure,  definitive,  though  the  ink 
still  is  smeary  on  the  book  under  the  knife — the 
criticism  of  the  age  of  O.  Henry.  Is  this  too 
strong?  Let  us  examine.  Criticism,  to  some  ex- 


82     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

tent  at  least,  is  a  science  and  obeys  certain  laws. 

First  law  of  all,  a  critic  should  approach  his 
problem  with  honesty,  with  open  mind,  seeking 
truth;  but  the  very  titles  of  two  of  Mr.  Mencken's 
most  typical  books  bear  State's  evidence  against  him. 
Prejudice — prae-judicium — a  judgment  arrived  at 
before  evidence  has  been  heard.  Prejudice  reads 
a  book,  not  to  be  led  to  a  conclusion,  but  to  be 
confirmed  in  its  own  preconceptions;  it  picks  and 
chooses  those  points  that  give  poignancy  to  the  al 
ready  formulated  verdict.  It  is  oblivious  of  all 
else.  William  Dean  Howells  could  not  possibly 
write  a  book  that  would  have  merit  for  the  author 
of  "Prejudices,"  nor  could  Sarah  Orne  Jewett,  nor 
Mary  E.  Wilkins.  He  has  made  his  dogma  and 
it  is  as  inflexible  as  the  rulings  of  Torquemada. 
Criticism  with  him  is  an  exploiting  of  his  own  pre 
conceptions  and  aversions,  not  an  honest  following 
of  the  truth,  lead  where  it  may.  I  challenge,  there 
fore,  the  author  of  "Prejudices"  when  he  presents 
himself  as  juryman  who  shall  weigh  evidence  and 
pass  judgment. 

Again,  criticism  is  not  written  in  superlatives, 
in  "C  Major" — a  Menckenian  term;  criticism  does 
not  roar  in  Rooseveltian  strenuousness,  nor  raise  a 
plain  x  to  x*  nor,  in  the  very  face  of  the  evidence, 
to  .*r10.  One  need  not  linger  here  long :  read  "Preju 
dices"  or  "Prefaces" : 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  83 

I  myself  am  surely  no  disciple  of  the  Polish  tube 
rose  [Chopin] — his  sweetness,  in  fact,  gags  me,  and  I 
turn  even  to  Moszkowski  for  relief. 

One  ploughs  through  "Innocents  Abroad"  and 
through  parts  of  "A  Tramp  Abroad"  with  incredulous 
amazement. 

All  we  have  in  the  way  of  Civil  War  literature  is  a 
few  conventional  melodramas,  a  few  half -forgotten 
short  stories  by  Ambrose  Bierce  and  Stephen  Crane, 
and  a  half-dozen  idiotic  popular  songs  in  the  manner 
of  Randall's  "Maryland,  My  Maryland." 

No  sound  art,  in  fact,  could  possibly  be  democratic. 
Tolstoi  wrote  a  whole  book  to  prove  the  contrary,  and 
only  succeeded  in  making  his  case  absurd.  The  only 
art  that  is  capable  of  reaching  the  Homo  Boobus  is 
art  that  is  already  debased  and  polluted — band  music, 
official  sculpture,  Pears'  Soap  painting,  the  popular 
novel. 

The  italics,  in  every  (case  except  the  "Homo 
Boobus/'  are  mine. 

A  critic  is  humble  in  the  presence  of  the  universe 
of  things  he  can  never  know  about  his  subject,  toil 
hard  as  he  may.  Seldom  may  he  be  sophomorically 
final  or  autocratically  dogmatic  in  his  generaliza 
tion,  but  in  "Prejudices"  and  beyond  it  "a  campus 
cock-sureness" — I  thank  thee  Shylock,  for  that 
word — an  ipse  dixit  assertiveness  that  is  as  if  the 


84     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Thunderer   himself   had   descended  to  deliver   the 
verdict.     One  may  open  at  random : 

'Beethoven  suffered  more  during  the  composition  of 
the  Fifth  symphony  than  all  the  judges  of  the  supreme 
benches  of  the  world  have  suffered  jointly  since  the 
time  of  the  Gerousia. 

We  have  produced  thus  far  but  one  genuine  wit — 
Ambrose  Bierce. 

New  England  has  never  shown  the  slightest  sign  of 
a  genuine  enthusiam  for  ideas. 

Observe  Virginia  to-day.  It  is  years  since  a  first- 
rate  man,  save  only  Cabell,  has  come  out  of  it;  it  is 
years  since  an  idea  has  come  out  of  it. 

To  wade  through  the  books  of  such  characteristic 
American  fictioners  as  Frances  Hodgson  Burnett, 
Mary  E.  Wilkins  Freeman,  F.  Hopkinson  Smith,  Alice 
Brown,  James  Lane  Allen,  Winston  Churchill,  Ellen 
Glasgow,  Gertrude  Atherton  and  Sarah  Orne  Jewett 
is  to  undergo  an  experience  that  is  almost  terrible. 
The  flow  of  words  is  completely  purged  of  ideas. 

Phelps  cites  in  particular  an  ass  named  Professor 
Richardson,  whose  "American  Literature,"  it  appears, 
"is  still  a  standard  work"  and  "a  deservedly  high 
authority" — apparently  in  colleges.  In  the  1892  edi 
tion  of  this  magnum  opus,  Mark  [Twain]  is  dismissed 
with  less  than  four  lines,  and  ranked  below  Irving, 
Holmes  and  Lowell.  .  .  .  Mark  is  dismissed  by  this 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  85 

professor    'Balderdash     as     a     hollow     buffoon.  .  .  . 
College  professors,  alas,  never  learn  anything. 

Again  the  italics  are  mine. 

Let  the  last  serve  as  the  type.  Richardson's 
history,  Volume  I,  from  which  the  offending  judg 
ment  comes,  was  written  in  1885,  and  the  publishers 
finally  bound  up  the  original  two  parts  of  the  work 
as  a  single  volume  in  1892.  Is  a  man  "an  ass,"  a 
"professor  Balderdash,"  who  with  the  perspective 
of  1885,  a  full  generation  ago,  when  Mr.  Mencken 
was  five  years  old,  placed  Mark  Twain  below  Irving, 
and  Holmes  and  Lowell?  If  so,  then  Poe  was  an 
ass,  and  all  other  critics  have  been  asses  who  have 
ventured  upon  a  final  rating  of  contemporaries. 
He  proves  the  asininity  of  Richardson  apparently 
from  this  single  case.  I  think  it  was  Emerson  who 
once  defined  genius  as  the  ability  to  generalize  from 
a  single  example. 

Mencken's  undoubtedly  is  the  most  raucous  and 
the  most  arresting  voice  that  has  been  raised  to  pro 
test  against  the  weaknesses  of  the  Age  of  O.  Henry, 
yet  in  all  his  tones  and  methods  he  is  himself  of  the 
O.  Henry  school.  The  journalist  must  "put  his  stuff 
across"  or  fail  miserably,  and  Mr.  Mencken  pre 
eminently  is  a  journalist,  with  the  journalist's  per 
spective  and  the  journalist's  point  of  view.  He 
knows  only  the  city,  the  sophisticated  set,  the  snob- 


86     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

bishly  intellectual,  the  perpetually  bored;  and  to 
gain  their  attention  he  must  be  smartly  original, 
brilliant,  violent,  arresting.  The  most  certain  sol 
vent  of  boredom,  he  realizes,  is  humor;  the  O.  Henry 
type  of  humor  completely  up  to  date  and  smash- 
ingly  original.  And  he  is  master  of  the  humor  that 
is  requisite ;  a  humor  more  effective  indeed  than  O. 
Henry's,  since  it  is  less  obviously  a  straining  for 
effect.  Seldom  have  I  laughed  audibly  over  a  page 
of  O.  Henry's,  never  over  one  of  Irvin  Cobb's, 
but  I  chuckled  aloud  the  first  time  I  read  this: 

The  finish  of  a  civilian  in  a  luxurious  hospital,  with 
trained  nurses  fluttering  over  him  and  his  pastor 
whooping  and  heaving  for  him  at  the  foot  of  the  bed, 
is  often  quite  as  terrible  as  any  form  of  exitus  wit 
nessed  in  war. 

The  O.  Henry  likeness  is  largely  a  matter  of  style 
and  expression,  a  disregard  for  exactness  and  truth ; 
journalistic  cleverness,  vulgar  sensation.  One  may 
open  at  random  now :  note  the  O.  Henry  paradox, 
the  O.  Henry  triplets,  the  O.  Henry  smartness: 

A  Scotch  Presbyterian  with  a  soaring  soul  is  as 
cruelly  beset  as  a  wolf  with  fleas,  or  a  zebra  with  the 
botts.  Let  a  spark  of  the  divine  fire  spring  to  life  in 
that  arid  corpse,  and  it  must  fight  its  way  to  flame 
through  a  drum  fire  of  wet  sponges.  A  humming  bird 
immersed  in  kartoffelsuppc.  Walter  Pater  writing  for 
the  London  Daily  Mail.  Lucullus  travelling  steerage. 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  87 

He  [Shaw]  founded,  in  England  the  superstition 
that  Ibsen  was  no  more  than  a  tin-pot  evangelist — a 
sort  of  brother  to  General  Booth,  Mrs.  Pankhurst  and 
the  syndics  of  the  Sex  Hygiene  Society. 

Here  we  have  a  situation  in  comedy  almost  exactly 
parallel  to  that  in  which  a  colored  bishop  whoops  "On 
ward,  Christian  Soldiers !"  like  a  calliope  in  order  to 
drown  out  the  crowing  of  the  rooster  concealed  be 
neath  his  chasuble. 

Down  there  [in  Dixie]  a  poet  is  now  almost  as  rare 
as  an  oboe-player,  a  dry-point  etcher  or  a  metaphysi 
cian.  It  is,  indeed,  amazing  to  contemplate  so  vast  a 
vacuity. 

Good  health  in  man,  indeed,  is  almost  invariably  a 
function  of  inferiority.  A  professionally  healthy  man, 
e.  g.f  an  acrobat,  an  osteopath  or  an  ice-wagon  driver, 
is  always  stupid. 

If  that  time  ever  comes,  the  manufacture  of  artists 
will  become  a  feasible  procedure,  like  the  present  manu 
facture  of  soldiers,  capons,  right-thinkers  and  doctors 
of  philosophy. 

The  truth  about  Dreiser  is  that  he  is  still  in  the  tran 
sition  stage  between  Christian  Endeavor  and  civilization. 

One  by  searching  may  find  still  smarter  examples: 

One  would  not  be  surprised  to  hear  that,  until  he 
[George  Ade]  went  off  to  his  freshwater  college,  he 
slept  in  his  underwear  and  read  the  Epworth  Herald. 


88     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Oppenheim  .  .  .  stands,  as  to  one  leg,  on  the  shoul 
ders  of  Walt  Whitman,  and,  as  to  the  other,  on  a  stack 
of  Old  Testaments. 

It  is  a  sort  of  college  town  Weltanschauung  that  one 
finds  in  him  [Howells]  ;  he  is  an  Agnes  Repplier  in 
pantaloons. 

Here  [in  Bennett's  novels]  we  have  a  sweet  com 
mingling  of  virtuous  conformity  and  complacent  op 
timism,  of  sonorous  platitude  and  easy  certainty — here, 
in  brief,  we  have  the  philosophy  of  the  English  middle 
classes — and  here,  by  the  same  token,  we  have  the  sort 
of  guff  that  the  half-educated  of  our  own  country 
understand.  It  is  the  calm,  superior  numskullery  that 
was  Victorian;  it  is  by  Samuel  Smiles  out  of  Hannah 
More. 

And  this  last  from  the  author  who  finds  in  Poe 
"congenital  vulgarity  of  taste" : 

This  man,  for  all  his  grand  dreams,  had  a  shoddy 
soul ;  he  belonged  authentically  to  the  era  of  cuspidors, 
"females,"  and  Sons  of  Temperance. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  comment.     To  some,  perhaps, 
this  is  literary  criticism.     Perhaps. 


IV 

The  professor  is  nothing  if  not  a  maker  of  card  in 
dexes;  he  must  classify  or  be  damned.     His  master- 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  80 

piece  is  the  dictum  that  "it  is  excellent,  but  it  is  not 
a  play." 

Yes,  I  am  listening.  But  what  if  it  is  not  ex 
cellent?  what  if  it  is  labeled  a  play  on  its  yellow 
jacket  and  made  emphatic  by  adjectives  in  the 
superlative?  What  if  it  is  sold  as  a  play,  and 
whooped  up  as  a  play  on  all  the  bill-boards,  and 
reviewed  as  a  play  by  all  the  reviewers,  and 
what  if  it  is  not  a  play  at  all,  but  a  mere 
vaudeville  stunt?  The  whole  transaction  becomes 
then  a  sign  of  the  times.  It  is  f jelony  under 
the  pure  food  laws  to  brand  a  package  "Cali 
fornia  honey"  when  it  is  Missouri  corn  syrup,  even 
though  the  corn  syrup  is  excellent.  Am  I  concerned 
only  with  the  name,  only  with  niceties  of  technique, 
with  manner  and  traditions?  If  that  were  all  then 
I  would  deserve  all  the  sarcasm  that  the  tribe  of 
Mencken  has  heaped  upon  my  profession.  The  very 
foundations  are  in  question.  Criticism  should  be 
rulings  of  a  supreme  court  of  literature.  What 
ever  else  is  extreme  and  impassioned,  criticism 
should  be  serene ;  whatever  else  is  distorted,  criticism 
should  be  the  truth.  And  Mencken,  touch  him  where 
you  will,  is  extreme  and  distorted.  He  leaves  sacri 
fice  and  service  out  of  his  philosophy  of  life  and  thus 
reduces  it  to  a  mere  zero.  He  is  the  Nietzsche  of  our 
literature,  and  of  Nietzsche,  as  we  have  already 


90     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

quoted,  "no  charge  was  too  far-fetched,  no  manipula 
tion  or  interpretation  of  evidence  was  too  daring,  to 
enter  into  his  ferocious  indictment."  He  was  not 
seeking  the  truth:  he  was  hurling  his  dogmas. 

Mencken  is  a  journalist,  and  the  curse  of  the  jour 
nalist,  as  already  we  have  seen,  is  that  he  has  lost  his 
horizon.  His  work  he  pitches  ever  to  the  almighty 
Now.  He  must  be  heard  instantly:  he  must  bring 
methods  and  materials  startlingly  new  or  see  his 
work  drop  dead  from  the  press.  When  he  speaks 
he  must  speak  in  falsetto;  when  he  means  three  he 
must  say  nine.  When  Mark  Twain — a  journalist 
to  his  finger  tips — wished  to  convey  the  fact  that 
the  characters  in  Cooper's  novels  are  stiff  and 
wooden,  he  expressed  it  this  way :  it  is  impossible  to 
tell  in  his  novels  the  living  people  from  the  corpses 
save  that  the  corpses  are  more  lively.  It  is  not 
true :  it  is  farce,  pure  and  simple,  and  not  criticism, 
but  "it  is  what  you  must  write  if  you  are  to  be 
read  in  these  days."  The  journalist  is  prone  to 
forget  that  the  history  of  literature  is  the  history  of 
a  long  evolution,  that  there  are  fashions  in  literature 
as  surely  as  there  are  fashions  in  dress,  and  that  the 
fashions  of  1850  are  no  more  asinine  than  the  fash 
ions  of  1922.  Shall  one  call  one's  grandfather  an 
ass  because  he  enjoyed  literature  that  to-day  would 
not  be  accepted  by  "The  Smart  Set"?  Mencken 
damns  George  William  Curtis  as  a  "shoddy  medi- 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  91 

ocrity,"  but  a  generation  ago  Curtis  was  the 
Mencken  of  his  time,  the  leader  of  the  Mugwumps, 
champion  stone-slinger  at  the  Elaine  Goliath. 

The  man,  then,  is  a  literary  Nietzsche  who  has 
been  evolved  from  American  journalism  during 
the  age  of  O.  Henry.  I  write  of  his  failures  not 
to  try  to  reform  him — that  would  be  like  preaching 
to  Eugene  Field  in  the  presence  of  Nye  and  Riley: 
he  would  be  pinning  a  tail  on  the  solemn  old  ass 
and  winking  from  behind  his  hand — I  simply 
describe  a  literary  disease  of  the  times.  H.  L. 
Mencken  at  forty  is  training  a  surprisingly  large 
group  of  youngsters,  who  should  be  the  future 
makers  of  American  criticism,  into  a  kind  of 
literary  jazz  band.  Their  writings  confront  one 
everywhere.  Pick  up  the  latest  assessment  of  our 
literature,  "Letters  on  Contemporary  American 
Authors,"  by  MacCollough — Mencken  and  water. 
Follow  it  through  the  newer  reviews.  Just  as  the 
trail  of  O.  Henry  has  been  beaten  into  a  highway 
through  the  jungle  of  the  American  short  story,  so 
the  sensational  vogue  of  Mencken  is  creating  a  new 
type  of  criticism.  Is  it  to  endure  and  become  the 
type  of  the  criticism  of  the  next  literary  period? 
Is  it  to  dominate  the  picture,  or  are  we  to-day  simply 
living  through  a  rag-time  interlude? 

Muck-raking  may  endure  for  a  night,  but  the 
morning  comes  always  swiftly.  Destructive  crit- 


92     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

icism  is  the  most  ephemeral  of  all  literary  things. 
It  is  narrowly  limited  by  its  very  nature.  It  must 
have  quick  results  or  cease.  The  muck-rake  era  of 
twenty  years  ago,  with  its  "shame  of  the  cities" 
and  "corrupt  and  contented,"  endured  not  long  and 
is  to-day  forgotten.  Undoubtedly  it  accomplished 
some  good.  An  eruption  of  superlatives  will  rout 
certain  classes  of  criminals  often  as  effectively  as 
a  machine-gun.  According  to  Mencken,  it  is  the 
only  way  some  intrenched  lawbreakers  may  be 
reached.  In  an  "Atlantic  Monthly"  paper  he 
defends  the  fierce  vice-scourgings  and  the  furious 
boss-baitings  periodically  indulged  in  by  the  daily 
papers  because  of  the  positive  results  that  often  are 
achieved. 

The  white-slave  agitation  of  a  year  or  so  ago  was 
ludicrously  extravagant  and  emotional,  but  its  net 
effect  is  a  better  conscience,  a  new  alertness.  The 
newspapers  discharged  broadsides  of  12-inch  guns  to 
bring  down  a  flock  of  buzzards — but  they  brought 
down  the  buzzards.  They  have  libeled  and  lynched 
the  police — but  the  police  are  the  better  for  it.  They 
have  represented  salicylic  as  an  elder  brother  to  bi 
chloride  of  mercury — but  we  are  poisoned  less  than  we 
used  to  be.  They  have  lifted  the  plain  people  to 
frenzies  of  senseless  terror  over  drinking-cups  and 
neighbors  with  coughs — but  the  death-rate  from  tuber 
culosis  declines.  They  have  railroaded  men  to  prison, 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  93 

denying  them  all  the  common  rights — but  fewer  male 
factors  escape  to-day  than  yesterday. 

Agreed!  It  is  like  a  Methodist  sermon.  But 
what  do  these  methods  accomplish  when  applied  to 
the  literary  field?  It  is  not  a  felony  punishable 
under  State  or  Federal  statutes  to  write  a  "mushy" 
book.  Harold  Bell  Wright  or  Henry  Sydnor  Har 
rison  or  Gene  Stratton  Porter  cannot  be  convicted, 
after  a  newspaper  hue  and  cry,  and  sent  to  prison 
for  feeding  literary  "Peruna"  to  the  willing  mul 
titude.  There  is  no  law  on  any  of  the  statute- 
books  to  convict  Robert  W.  Chambers  of  literary 
boot-legging  and  send  him  to  the  reformatory.  No 
depths  of  denunciation,  no  machine-gun  crackle  of 
adjectives  however  hot  and  original,  no  expression 
of  contempt  of  the  twaddle-swallowing  multitude 
however  withering,  no  threatenings  of  hell  how 
ever  sulphurous  will  ever  send  these  authors  to  the 
Menckenian  mourners'  benches,  not  at  least  while 
the  multitude  pays  for  their  creations  in  figures 
that  would  delight  a  "patent"  medicine  manufac 
turer. 

But  what  of  the  mass  itself,  the  abysmal  brain 
less  monster  that  battens  on  Wright  and  Chambers 
and  "Pollyanna"  books — can  this  be  reformed  by 
our  new  literary  Amos?  Not  in  the  slightest. 
The  people,  "the  proletariat,"  "the  masses,"  do 


94     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

not  read  him;  they  could  not  were  it  to  save  their 
lives  read  a  line  of  him.  I  lent  "Prefaces"  to  a 
sophomore,  and  he  said  it  certainly  "stumped  him" : 
he  could  not  find,  he  said,  all  the  words  even  in  the 
dictionary.  "Prefaces"  is  for  the  few,  not  for  the 
herd. 

And  what  of  the  few,  the  "saving  remnant,"  "the 
forlorn  intelligentsia/''  some  of  them  professors, 
many  of  them  book  reviewers,  some  of  them  pub 
lishers'  readers,  some  of  them  decayed  old  "Atlan 
tic"  Brahmans?  What  can  he  accomplish  by  har 
rying  this  bedeviled  little  forlorn  hope?  The  herd 
can  be  stampeded  into  violence  of  many  kinds,  but 
it  cannot  be  driven  with  a  rush  to  higher  literary 
levels.  America  is  paying  the  penalty  inseparable 
from  democracy.  To  compel  all  the  people  of  a 
nation  to  attend  school  until  into  their  teens,  their 
late  teens  in  some  States,  to  lift  the  totality  of  the 
mass — all  of  it — up  toward  the  reading  level, 
means  inevitably  the  bringing  down  of  the  lit 
erature  of  that  nation  toward  this  average  plane. 
Literature  until  democratic  times,  until  yesterday 
in  fact,  was  an  aristocratic  thing,  made  by  the 
inspired  few  for  the  civilized  few  who  could  enjoy 
and  comprehend  it.  Mencken,  so  far  as  literature 
is  concerned,  has  never  been  democratized.  Read 
his  "Men  versus  the  Man."  His  contempt  for  the 
literary  crudeness  of  the  democratic  mass,  and  for 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  95 

those  who  prostitute  their  powers  in  order  to  fatten 
upon  its  demands,  is  the  source  of  much  of  his 
sarcasm.  But  American  democracy  is  what  it  is. 
Shall  we  ignore  the  mass,  have  a  distinctive  litera 
ture  worthy  of  the  civilized  few,  and  be  as  oblivious 
of  what  the  "Homo  Boobus"  reads  as  we  are  of 
what  he  eats?  Who  will  have  the  powers  and  the 
sacrificing  soul  to  write  it?  Literature  has  become 
a  commercial  product.  When  prepared  for  the  mass 
which  has  learned  to  read  in  our  schools  and  col 
leges,  it  means  for  its  creator  motor-cars,  and  win 
ters  in  Florida,  and  country  estates,  but  when  made 
on  the  high  classic  levels  of  beauty  and  art  it  means 
the  attic  and  celibacy,  and,  if  fame  finally,  then 
posthumous  fame.  To  raise  the  mass  to  the  appre 
ciation  of  real  art  requires  time :  it  is  a  matter  of 
evolution.  It  cannot  be  done  by  shouting  and 
reviling  or  arguing.  To  stand  and  damn  a  mud- 
turtle  will  not  make  him  a  sprinter.  Only  remove 
the  obstructions  that  hinder  him,  and  be  patient; 
he  will  get  there  in  time. 

Why  then  all  this  sound  and  fury?  It  accom 
plishes  nothing  worth  the  accomplishing.  It  fur 
nishes  entertainment  to  a  few  sophisticated  souls 
who  have  exhausted  the  round  of  sensations,  and 
it  provokes  a  few  devil-ridden  professors  to  retort, 
but  that  is  all.  It  is  a  tempest  in  a  Volstead  beer- 
mug;  it  is  a  wicked  new  home-brew,  strangely 


96     Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

exhilarating  at  first,  but  requiring,  like  a  narcotic, 
ever  a  stronger  and  stronger  dose.  X  must  be 
raised  to  or2,  then  to  ^9,  and  then  to  x*.  There  is 
small  variety  in  the  Mencken  box  of  tricks,  as  small 
as  in  Irvin  Cobb's,  and  the  show  is  beginning  to 
tire  one  by  its  monotony.  Like  O.  Henry's  work  it 
deadens  its  readers  for  the  more  subtle  tones  of 
art.  Moreover,  it  creates  nothing:  its  whole 
course  is  destructive.  At  the  close  of  his  "Yale 
Review"  diagnosis  of  the  ailments  afflicting  our 
"National  Letters"  he  can  bring  only  this  consola 
tion  to  the  patient:  "I  have  described  the  disease. 
Let  me  say  at  once  that  I  have  no  remedy  to  offer." 
He  has  revealed  to  the  astounded  sufferer  that  he 
has  cholera  infantum,  rubeola,  pink-eye,  and  cerebral 
peritonitis,  but  he  refuses  to  prescribe  even  a  pallia 
tive,  and  he  will  not  suggest  to  the  patient  even  that 
he  smile  serenely  and  say  at  frequent  intervals, 
"I  am  in  perfect  health." 

At  forty  comes  the  philosophic  mind.  Is  it  too 
much  to  hope  that  a  Sainte  Beuve  may  be  lurking 
under  this  vulgar  and  furiously  erupting  Stromboli  ? 
Is  it  stretching  credulity  too  far  to  believe  that  real 
meat  may  at  last  come  out  of  this  ferocious  eater 
of  men — even  "Causeries  du  Lundi,"  penetrating, 
brilliant,  constructive  ?  May  we  not  even  hope  that 
the  fires  of  romance,  genuine  romance,  still  smolder 
ing,  we  believe,  smokily  in  this  crematory  furnace, 


A  Critic  in  C  Major  97 

may  yet  flame  up  clear  and  produce  for  us  creative 
work,  rather  than  destructive  work  unworthy  of 
his  undoubted  powers?  And  may  we  not  address 
him  even  as  he  addressed  the  wavering  Kipling 
when  he  also  was  hovering  about  forty : 

Unsung  the  East  lies  glimmering, 
Unsung  the  palm-trees  toss  their  frills, 
Unsung  the  seas  their  splendours  fling 

The  while  you  prate  of  laws  and  tills. 

Each  man  his  destiny  fulfils : 
Can  it  be  yours  to  loose  and  stray, 

In  sophist  garb  to  wash  your  quills — 
Sing  us  again  of  Mandalay.     ^ 

Master,  regard  the  plaint  we  bring 

And  hearken  to  the  prayer  we  pray. 
Lay  down  your  law  and  sermoning, 

Sing  us  again  of  Mandalay. 


THE  PROPHET  OF  THE  LAST 
FRONTIER  * 


FROM  the  first  year  of  the  new  century,  when  he 
burst  upon  the  consciousness  of  the  reading  world, 
until  the  year  before  America  entered  the  World 
War,  when  he  as  suddenly  disappeared,  for  sixteen 
years  Jack  London,  like  an  unheralded  comet, 
shocked  and  horrified  and  thrilled  the  American 
people.  That  the  majority  of  them  liked  to  be 
shocked  and  thrilled  and  horrified  is  shown  by  the 
demand  for  his  work.  A  stream  of  checks  from 
more  than  eighty  different  magazines  poured  in 
upon  him;  six  of  the  foremost  publishing  houses 
of  America  were  eager  to  gamble  on  the  financial 
coup  that  might  come  from  his  next  book,  and  he 
gave  them  forty-eight  chances ;  forty-eight  books  in 
sixteen  years,  some  of  them  heading  the  list  of  the 
best  sellers  of  their  period.  The  sixteen  years  were 
his.  He  was  the  startling  figure  in  that  loud-voiced, 
Kipling-swayed  fin  de  siecle  decade  before  the  war; 
the  voice  crying  in  the  wilderness,  "Make  ready  for 
the  reign  of  the  brute" ;  the  ax  laid  at  the  foot  of 

1  Delivered  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  of  Ohio  Wesleyan 
University,  March  16,  1922. 

98 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier     99 

the  tree  of  sickly  sentiment  and  effeminate  swash 
buckling  romance  and  the  "mollycoddle"  life.  He 
learned  his  art  of  Kipling  and  of  Gogol,  and  he 
wrote  in  the  Presidency  of  Theodore  Roosevelt,  in 
the  era  of  the  strenuous  life.  From  Jack  London 
learn  of  Jack  Londonism,  learn  the  spirit  of  the 
epoch  that  could  make  him  possible.  No  other 
American  writer  has  had  a  career  more  representa 
tive  of  his  time;  none  certainly  has  had  one  that 
is  more  remarkable. 

To  study  Jack  London  is  to  be  impressed  first 
of  all  with  his  { Americanism^  He  was  as  indige- 
nous  as  Mark  Twain;  the  culmination  of  a  century 
and  a  half  on  American  soil,  a  figure  impossible 
save  in  the  California  of  the  opening  decade  of  the 
twentieth  century.  His  family,  both  sides  of  it, 
was  of  old  American  stock :  English  adventurers 
with  a  dash  of  Puritanism,  Welsh  settlers  in  New 
Jersey,  Teutonic  refugees  in  Pennsylvania,  the  most 
restless  souls  of  a  restless  age.  They  fought  in 
all  the  wars,  they  surged  westward  with  the  settle 
ment,  they  lived  in  emigrant  trains,  they  were  mas 
sacred  by  Indians,  they  were  in  all  the  perils  of  that 
century-long  march  across  the  continent.  One  of 
them,  "Priest"  Jones,  tarried  behind  in  Ohio  as  a 
circuit-rider  through  regions  where  physical  prowess 
was  the  chief  prerequisite  for  spreading  the  Gospel, 
and  he  became  the  grandfather  of  our  novelist.  By 


100  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

the  time  of  the  Civil  War  both  branches  of  the 
family  had  reached  the  Gold  Coast,  but  they  had  got 
no  gold.  With  empires  all  about  them  to  be  had 
for  the  taking,  they  were  pressing  excitedly  on  for 
something  better. 

In  more  than  one  of  his  books  London  has  pic 
tured  this  iron  race  from  which  he  sprang.     "The 
f  tfre  Mann"  is  the  epic  of  the  descendants  of 


the  Argonauts  halted  in  their  westward  march  by 
the  Pacific,  too  restless  to  settle  down,  and  al 
lowing  their  hard-won  prize  to  be  taken  from  them 
by  the  more  patient  tribes  of  toilers  and  grubbers 
for  jwhom  they  had  broken  the  y&y.  And  the 
race  had  degenerated  into  dreamers,  revolutionists, 
bolshevists,  aimless  adventurers.  The  father  of 
Jack  London,  instead  of  settling  upon  lands  that 
easily  would  have  brought  him  wealth,  had  turned 
northward  from  the  westward  march  and  had  spent 
his  young  manhood  as  a  trapper  and  adventurer 
in  the  Canadian  wilds.  London's  super-man  Jacob 
Wilse  in  "A  Daughter  of  the  Snows"  is  an  idealized 
picture  of  him. 

The  trapper  father  had  come  out  of  the  sturdy 
Welsh  stock  which  had  trickled  into  early  Ohio  out 
of  the  jostling  East,  and  the  mother  was  a  nomadic 
daughter  of  the  Irish  emigrant  settlers  of  Ontario. 
From  both  sides  came  the  wanderlust  of  the  blood,  the 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  frontier  101 

fever  to  be  moving,  to  be  pushing  on  to  the  edge  of 
things. 

In  1873  he  was  in  San  Francisco,  a  member  of 
the  police  force,  and  here  it  was  that  three  years 
later,  January  12,  3:876,  was  born  his  tenth  child. 
Jack_London,  the  most  restless  soul  of  all  his  rest 
less  line.  He  was  reared  in  a  nursery  for  rest 
lessness  :  his  first  years  were  a  perpetual  moving- 
day.  When  he  was  four,  the  family  was  living  on 
a  truck  farm  in  Alameda;  three  years  later  they 
were  on  a  desolate  ranch  in  San  Mateo  County, 
south  of  San  Francisco.  The  squalid  moving  scene 
burned  itself  into  the  lad's  memory:  "We  had 
horses  and  a  farm  wagon,"  he  tells  us,  "and  onto 
this  we  piled  all  our  household  belo.ngings,  all 
hands  climbing  up  on  the  top  of  the  load,  and  with 
the  cow  tied  on  behind."  A  desolate  region  at  best, 
to  the  solitary  boy  it  was  lonely  beyond  description. 
"Ours  was  the  only  American  family.  I  had  no 
companions."  A  year  later  the  scene  changed  to  a 
truck  farm  at  Livermore.  "I  was  very  much  alone. 
Had  I  been  as  other  children,  'blessed'  with  brothers 
and  sisters  and  plenty  of  playmates,  I  should  have 
been  mentally  occupied,  grown  up  as  the  rest  of 
my  class  grew,  become  a  laborer  and  been  content. 
But  I  was  alone,  very  much  so.  This  fostered 
contemplation." 


102  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Until  his  eleventh  year  there  was  nothing  in  his 
life  to  refine  him  or  to  quicken  his  powers.  No 
childhood  could  have  been  more  squalid :  "I  never 
had  toys  nor  playthings  like  other  children.  My 
first  memories  of  life  were  pinched  by  poverty." 
Forced  to  a  round  of  labor  that  he  hated,  driven  in 
upon  himself,  he  became  dwarfed  in  all  save  the 
physical,  but  this,  as  if  to  compensate,  became  at 
length  perfect.  Everything  in  his  life  watered  and 
fertilized  the  wild  individualism  that  was  his  birth 
right :  it  bred  day-dreaming  and  discontent,  an 
Indian-like  impatience  of  control,  and  that  wild 
sense  of  freedom  to  work  his  solitary  will  which 
is  the  heritage  of  the  border-born.  Of  the  religious 
and  the  moral  in  his  early  training  there  was  noth 
ing  and  worse  than  nothing.  He  was  reared  in 
an  atmosphere  of  coarseness :  "All  the  inconceiv 
able  filth  a  child  running  at  large  in  a  primitive 
country-side  may  hear  men  utter  was  mine."  A 
little  schooling  there  was,  ludicrously  narrow  and 
crude,  and  a  few  books:  "dime  novels  borrowed 
from  the  hired  men,"  Irving's  "Alhambra,"  a  life 
of  Garfield,  du  Chaillu's  African  travels — that  was 
all.  At  eight  he  chanced  upon  a  mutilated  copy  of 
Ouida's  novel  "Signa"  and  was  thrilled  and  set 
to  day-dreaming  by  its  opening  sentence :  "It  was 
only  a  little  lad,  but  he  had  dreams  of  becoming  a 
great  musician,  and  having  all  Europe  at  his  feet." 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  103 

When  he  was  .t£n  came  the  final  move  of  the 
family,  this  time  to  J2aklandc-a  vei"itable  new 
world  for  the  starved  lad.  Now  he  could  (at 
tend  the  public  schools  and  draw  books  from  the 
city  library.  At  first  he  plunged  into  an  orgy 
of  reading,  but  without  knowledge  of  books  or 
guidance.  "Nobody  at  home  bothered  their  heads 
over  what  I  read.  I  was  an  eager,  thirsty,  hungry 
little  kid."  Juveniles  he  passed  in  contempt.  He 
wanted  books  telling  of  life  in  the  world  of  action 
of  which  he  had  dreamed.  He  read  books  like 
Prescott's  "Conquest  of  Peru";  and  records  of 
voyages  into  the  great  ocean  that  lay  beyond  the 
Golden  Gate. 

But  time  for  reading  grew  ever  more  and  more 
limited.  The  family  poverty  had  flung  him  liter 
ally  into  the  streets,  and  in  hours  out  of  school,  on 
Saturdays  and  Sundays,  he  worked  as  he  could 
find  jobs;  setting  up  pins  in  bowling-alleys,  assisting 
on  ice-wagons,  sweeping  out  saloons,  and  selling 
newspapers.  When  he  was  eleven  he  was  given 
a  newspagej^rcjute  along  the  water-front  of  the  city, 
then  as  now  the  Tenderloin  of  Oakland.  Here  his 
education  moved  rapidly.  He  became  a  member, 
then  leader  of  a  boys'  gang,  and  then  the  most 
notorious  fighter  in  his  district:  his  fight  with 
the  slum  gamin  "Cheese  Face,"  as  narrated  in 
"Martin  Eden,"  was  as  primitive  and  as  ferocious 


104  'Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

as  even  the  dog-fight  in  " White  Fang."  Soon  he 
grew  to  be  precodoiisl^^wjfe  in  the  lore  of  street 
and  saloon;  he  knew  the  dives  of  the  water-front, 
in  Oakland  and  San  Francisco,  the  last  frontier  in 
the  march  across  the  continent,  where,  halted  by  the 
Pacific,  so  many  of  the  Argonauts  had  abandoned 
their  dreams  and  had  settled  down  to  rottenness 
and  despair  or  else  had  turned  their  restlessness 
into  lawlessness  and  piracy  on  the  bay. 

Upon  completing  the  work  of  the  grammar  grade, 
he  considered  his  school  days  over.  He  had  en 
larged  the  field  of  his  restlessness.  "When  I  was 
fourteen,"  to  quote  his  own  words,  "my  head  filled 
with  the  tales  of  the  old  voyagers,  my  visions  with 
tropic  isles  and  far  sea-rims,  I  was  sailing  a  small 
centerboard  skiff  around  San  Francisco  Bay  and  on 
the  Oakland  estuary.  I  wanted  to  go  to  sea.  I 
wan/ted  to  get  away  from  monotony  and  the 
commonplace.  I  was  in  the  flower  of  my  adoles 
cence,  a-thrill  with  romance  and  adventure,  dream 
ing  of  wild  life  in  the  wild  man-world.  .  .  .  And 
the  winds  of  adventure  blew  the  oyster  pirate 
sloops  up  and  down  San  Francisco  Bay,  from 
raided  oyster  beds  and  fights  at  night  on  shoal 
and  flat,  to  markets  in  the  morning  against  city 
wharves  where  peddlers  and  saloon-keepers  came 
down  to  buy." 

For  a  time  he  found  work  in  a  salmon  cannery 


**•**-•         ,     A      J 

t1-  tS& 

T/z£  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  105 

but  his  blood  revolted  at  the  drudgery.  There 
was  no  withstanding  the  restless  desire  within  him 
to  be  off  and  away,  and  impulsively,  with  the  sav 
ings  of  his  black  mammy  gladly  lent  to  him,  he 
bought  himself  a  slojDp,  the  Razzle-Dazzle,  hired 
a  crew  of  one  man,  "Spider  Healey,"  "a  black- 
whiskered  wharf-rat  of  twenty,"  and  joined  the 
poachers  who  lived  by  night  raids  upon  the  oyster- 
beds  of  the  lower  bay.  No  longer  would  he  live 
at  home :  he  slept  in  the  cabin  of  his  sloop  like  other 
pirates  and  was  at  home  upon  the  bay.  Again  his 
progress  was  rapid.  By  his  skill  and  ingenuity 
and  dare-devil  fearlessness  he  became  in  true  dime- 
novel  fashion  leader  of  the  gang:  "When  I  was 
sixteen  I  had  earned  the  title  of  'Prince,1  but  this 
title  was  given  me  by  a  gang  of  cutthroats  and 
thieves,  by  whom  I  was  called  The  Prince  of  the 
Oyster  Pirates/  '  He  was  sailing  partner  now  of 
the  heroes  of  the  bay :  "Clam"  and  "Young  Scratch 
Nelson."  "Clam  was  a  dare-devil,  but  Nelson  was 
a  reckless  maniac.  He  was  twenty  years  old  with 
the  body  of  a  Hercules.  When  he  was  shot  in 
Bernicia  a  couple  of  years  later,  the  coroner  said 
he  was  the  greatest-shouldered  man  he  had  ever 
laid  on  a  slab."  It  was  fame  to  be  accounted  the 
equal  and  the  superior  of  men  like  these.  After 
a  mad  exploit  he  was  invited  to  the  bar  by  the 
father  of  "Young  Scratch"  himself.  Fame  indeed! 


106  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

"  'Old  Scratch'  was  a  blue-eyed,  yellow-haired,  raw- 
boned  Viking,  big-bodied  and  strong-muscled  de 
spite  his  age.  And  he  had  sailed  the  seas  in  ships 
of  all  nations  in  the  old  savage  sailing  days.  .  .  . 
His  nickname  'Scratch'  arose  from  a  Berserker 
trick  of  his,  in  fighting,  of  tearing  off  his  opponent's 
face."  To  get  the  full  madness  of  the  period  one 
must  read  "John  Barleycorn."  His  wild  exploits 
are  still  remembered.  "Along  the  Oakland  water 
front,"  writes  one  who  knew  him  at  that  period, 
"the  old  salts  will  even  now  be  recounting  ripping 
tales  of  the  'young  dare-devil  London'  who  could 
drink  any  man  down  at  the  bar,  and  knock  any  two 
of  them  down  at  once  who  had  the  temerity  to 
refuse  his  invitation  to  'line-up.'  ' 

At  seventeen,  to  use  his  own  words,  he  was  "a 
drunken  bum."  "I  practically  lived  in  saloons,  be 
came  a  bar-room  loafer  and  worse.  For  weeks  at 
a  time  I  did  not  draw  a  sober  breath."  And  all 
this  because  of  the  heritage  of  his  race,  because  of 
his  starved  boyhood,  and  his  eagerness  to  live  what 
he  conceived  to  be  the  life  of  a  man.  "I  was  just 
human,  and  I  was  taking  the  path  in  the  world  that 
men  took — men  whom  I  admired  if  you  please: 
full-blooded  men,  lusty,  breedy,  chesty  men,  free 
spirits,  and  anything  but  niggard  in  the  way  they 
foamed  life  away."  His  philosophy  at  this  period 
is  the  philosophy  of  the  water-front  saloon :  "Better 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  107 

to  reign  among  booze-fighters,  a  prince,  than  to  toil 
twelve  hours  a  day  at  a  machine  for  ten  cents  an 
hour.  There  are  no  purple  passages  in  machine 
toil,  but  if  the  spending  of  $180  in  two  hours  is  n't 
a  purple  passage,  then  I  'd  like  to  know  what  is." 

The  road  is  a  short  one.     All  that  saved  him  was 
that  very  restlessness  of  his  race  which  had  brought 
him  into  the  danger,  and  that  thrill  of  romance  in 
his  blood  which  had  come  from  a  century  and  a 
half  of  wandering  toward  the  west,  for  that  winter 
there  came  to  the  Oakland  saloons  "the  skippers, 
mates,   hunters,   boat-steerers,   and   boat-pullers  of 
the  sealing  fleet  wintering  in  San  Francisco  Bay." 
Their  tales  of  adventure  fired  his  besotted  imagina 
tion  until  in  January,  1893,  when  he  was  seventeen, 
he  signed  for  a  voyage  in  the  three-topmast  sealing 
schooner  Sophe^  Sutherland  to  the   North   Pacific 
and  Japan.     It  was  a  turning-point  in  his  career. 
Coming  back  in  August,  the  liquor  driven   from 
his  system  by  the  seven  months'  cruise,  he  was  hor 
rified  to  find  that  most  of  his  boon  companions 
were  either  dead  or  in  prison.     Impulsively  he  found 
a  job,  resolved  to  listen  to  his  mother's  advice  and 
consider  his  wild  oats  sown.     The  winter  he  spent 
first  in  a  jute  mill,  and  then  in  a  boiler-room  as 
a  coal-heaver,  but  the  work  became  steadily  more 
intolerable,  until  one  day  when  the  springtime  was 
opening  he  dropped  everything  by  a  sudden  impulse 


108  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

and  boarded  a  freight-car  with  Coxey's  army  bound 
for  the  East.  "I  became  a  tramp,  begging  my  way 
from  door  to  door,  wandering  over  the  United 
States  and  Canada  sweating  bloody  sweats  in  slums 
and  prisons.  I  was  in  the  pit,  the  abyss,  the  human 
cesspool,  the  shambles  and  the  charnel-house  of  our 
civilization."  He  went  not  at  all  to  study  sociology 
as  did  Josiah  Flint.  "I  became  a  tramp,"  he  ex 
plains,  ''because  of  the  life  that  was  in  me,  of  the 
wanderlust  in  my  blood  that  would  not  let  me  rest; 
because  I  could  not  keep  away  from  it." 

The  Jack  London  that  the  world  knows  dates 
from  this  experience;  it  was  while  tramping  with 
tramps  that  Jack  London  awoke.  He  was  in  his 
nineteenth  year;  his  whole  life  had  contained  noth 
ing  that  had  not  fed  his  rampant  individualism.  "I 
could  see  myself  only  raging  through  life  without 
end  like  one  of  Nietzsche's  blond  beasts,  lustfully 
roving  and  conquering  by  sheer  superiority  and 
strength."  But  suddenly  he  found  himself  in  a 
world  of  which  he  had  never  dreamed.  "On  rods 
and  blind  baggages  I  fought  my  way  from  the  open 
West  where  men  bucked  big  and  the  job  hunted  the 
man,  to  the  congested  labor  centres  of  the  East 
where  men  were  small  potatoes  and  hunted  the  job 
for  all  they  were  worth.  On  this  new  blond  beast 
adventure  I  found  myself  looking  upon  life  from  a 
new  and  totally  different  angle."  He  was  con- 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  109 

verted — "reborn"  as  he  has  expressed  it — to  the 
doctrine  of  socialism,  which  to  him  in  those  early 
days  meant  simply  a  square  deal  for  the  under  dog. 
In  his  contacts  with  worn-out  laborers  on  city 
benches,  men  who  had  once  been  just  as  "blond 
beastly"  as  he  and  who  now  were  mere  rubbish 
on  the  dumps  of  a  city,  he  made  the  discovery 
that  the  rewards  of  the  world  go,  not  to  the  muscle- 
workers,  but  to  the  brain-worker.  It  stirred  his 
imagination-:  something  awoke  within  him.  "I 
resolved  to  sell  no  more  muscle,  and  to  become  a 
vender  of  brains.  Then  began  a  frantic  pursuit  of 
knowledge.  I  returned  to  California  and  opened 
the  books." 

For  a  year  he  was  a  student  in  the  Oakland  High 
School,  paying  his  way  by  working  as  janitor  and 
spending  all  of  his  Spare  time  reading  or  else 
preaching  in  the  parks  his  new  gospel  of  socialism. 
The  slow  pace  of  the  school  disgusted  him:  it 
would  be  two  years  more  before  he  could  enter  the 
University  of  California,  and  characteristically  he 
wanted  to  enter  at  once.  To  think  was  to  act.  "I 
gritted  my  teeth  and  started  to  cram  myself. 
There  were  three  months  yet  before  the  university 
entrance  examinations.  Without  laboratories,  with 
out  coaching,  sitting  in  my  bed-room,  I  proceeded 
to  compress  that  two  years*  work  into  three  months 
and  to  keep  reviewed  on  the  previous  year's  work. 


110  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Nineteen  hours  a  day  I  studied.  For  three  months 
I  kept  this  pace,  only  breaking  it  on  several  occa 
sions."  And  he  passed  the  examinations.  Some 
have  declared  that  the  swift,  super-man-like  prog 
ress  of  London's  hero  Martin  Eden  was  an  im 
possible  feat,  but  London  swept  away  all  such  ob 
jections  by  the  single  statement :  "I  was  Martin 
Eden.  At  the  end  of  three  working  years,  two 
of  which  were  spent  in  high  school  and  university, 
and  all  three  in  studying  intensely  and  immensely, 
I  was  publishing  stories  in  magazines  such  as  'The 
Atlantic  Monthly/  was  correcting  proofs  of  my 
first  book,  issued  by  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  and 
selling  sociological  articles  to  the  'Cosmopolitan'  and 
'McClure'sV 

He  remained  in  the  university  a  little  more  than 
a  semester,  leaving  in  January,  1897.  "The  pres 
sure  from  lack  of  money,  plus  a  conviction  that  the 
university  was  not  giving  me  all  that  I  wanted  in  the 
time  that  I  could  spare  for  it,  forced  me  to  leave." 
He  had  determined  to  make  a  writer  of  himself, 
and  with  characteristic  impetuosity  he  sought  the 
nearest  way.  His  comments  on  university  methods 
are  enlightening : 

I  had  to  unlearn  about  everything  the  teachers  and 
professors  of  literature  of  the  high  school  and  uni 
versity  had  taught  me.  I  was  very  indignant  about 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier   ill 

this  at  the  time ;  though  now  I  can  understand  it. 
They  did  not  know  the  trick  of  successful  writing  in 
the  years  of  1895  an(^  1896.  They  knew  all  about 
'Snow-Bound'  and  'Sartor  Resartus';  but  the  Amer 
ican  editors  of  1899  did  not  want  such  truck.  They 
wanted  the  1899  truck,  and  offered  to  pay  so  well  for 
it  that  the  teachers  and  professors  of  literature 
would  have  quit  their  jobs  could  they  have  supplied  it. 

By  sheer  main  force  he  would  teach  himself  the 
writing  art  and  would  enter  the  literary  profession 
as  he  had  entered  the  university — perchance  in  three 
months.  He  would  take  the  kingdom  of  letters 
by  storm.-  "Heavens,  how  I  wrote!  The  way  I 
worked  was  enough  to  soften  my  brain  and  send  me 
to  a  mad-house.  I  wrote,  I  wrote  everything — 
ponderous  essays,  scientific  and  sociological,  short 
stories,  humorous  verse,  verse  of  all  sorts  from  trio 
lets  and  sonnets  to  blank  verse  tragedy  and  elephan 
tine  epics  in  Spenserian  stanzas."  His  manuscripts 
were  returned  as  regularly  as  they  were  sent  out, 
but  like  Martin  Eden  he  toiled  on. 

In  the  midst  of  these  efforts  there  came,  like  a 
repetition  of  the  days  of  '49,  sudden  news  of  a 
gold  strike  in  the  Klondike  region  of  Alaska,  and 
as  impulsively  as  he  had  joined  Coxey's  army,  he 
was  off  with  the  first  wave  of  adventurers.  A 
year  later,  compelled  by  an  attack  of  scurvy,  he 


112  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

fought  his  way  out  in  an  open  boat,  a  iQOomile 
trip  down  the  Yukon  made  in  nineteen  days.  Ar 
riving  in  Oakland,  he  found  that  his  father  had 
died  and  that  the  care  of  the  family  had  shifted  to 
his  shoulders.  Work  was  scarce;  in  desperation 
he  turned  again  to  literary  efforts  and  during  the 
following  three  or  four  years  he  fought  the  battle 
for  recognition  that  he  has  described,  undoubtedly 
in  heightened  terms,  in  "Martin  Eden."  Whatever 
one  may  think  of  his  literary  product,  one  can  but  ad 
mire  the  pluck  and  the  perseverance  that  brought 
his  final  success.  No  one  ever  succeeded  with  heav 
ier  odds,  and  no  one  with  more  of  toil.  His  first 
recognition  came  in  January,  1899,  when  "The 
Overland  Monthly"  of  San  Francisco  published  his 
first  story  "The  Man  on  Trail,"  following  it  dur 
ing  the  year  with  seven  other  Alaska  stories.  Then 
"The  Atlantic  Monthly,"  repeating  the  Bret  Harte 
episode  of  thirty  years  before,  Accepted  his  story, 
"An  Odyssey  of  the  North,"  and  early  in  1900  is 
sued  the  nine  tales  under  the  title,  "The  Son  of  the 
Wolf."  Success,  however,  was  far  from  won:  his 
first  five  books  were  issued  by  five  different  pub 
lishing  houses.  It  was  not  until  1903,  with  his 
sixth  book,  "The  Call  of  the  Wild,"  that  he  may 
be  said  fairly  to  have  arrived  as  a  writer  of  fiction. 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  113 


With  this  introduction  one  is  prepared  in  a  meas 
ure  for  the  after  career  of  the  man,  the  career  that 
made  picturesque  the  opening  years  of  the  new 
century,  the  swift  era  before  the  German  explosion. 
Such  a  nature  must  have  constant  stimulus,  adven 
ture,  movement.  Now  he  is  in  the  slums  of  London 
in  rags  and  without  money  to  study  the  conditions 
of  the  underworld  of  the  modern  Babylon.  He 
emerged  with  pictures  so  extreme  that  they  out 
raged  the  sensibilities  of  all  who  read  them. 

Strange  vagrant  odors  come  drifting  along  the 
greasy  wind,  and  the  rain,  when  it  falls,  is  more  like 
grease  than  water  from  heaven.  The  very  cobble 
stones  are  scummed  with  grease. 

.  .  .  We  went  up  the  narrow  gravelled  walk.  On 
the  benches  on  either  side  was  arrayed  a  mass  of 
miserable  and  distorted  humanity,  the  sight  of  which 
would  have  impelled  Dore  to  more  diabolical  flights 
of  fancy  than  he  ever  succeeded  in  achieving.  It  was 
a  welter  of  rags  and  filth,  of  all  manner  of  loathsome 
skin  diseases,  open  sores,  bruises,  grossness,  indecency 
leering  monstrosities,  and  bestial  faces.  A  chill  raw 
wind  was  blowing,  and  these  creatures  huddled  there 
in  their  rags,  sleeping  for  the  most  part,  or  trying  to 
sleep. 


114  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

When  the  season  for  picking  hops  comes  around 
for  two  or  three  weeks  all  the  slum  dwellers  who 
can  possibly  get  loose  from  London,  "their  guts 
a-reek  with  pavement  offal,"  flock  like  vultures  into 
Kent: 

Out  they  come,  obedient  to  the  call,  which  is  the  call 
of  their  bellies  and  of  the  lingering  dregs  of  adventure- 
lust  still  in  them.  Slum,  stews,  and  ghetto  pour  them 
forth,  and  the  festering  contents  of  slum,  stews,  and 
ghetto  are  undiminished.  They  overrun  the  country 
like  an  army  of  ghouls,  and  the  country  does  not  want 
them.  They  are  out  of  place.  As  they  drag  their 
squat,  misshapen  bodies  along  the  highways  and  by 
ways,  they  resemble  some  vile  spawn  from  under 
ground.  Their  very  presence,  the  fact  of  their  exist 
ence,  is  an  outrage  to  the  fresh  bright  sun  and  the 
green  and  growing  things.  The  clean,  up-standing 
trees  cry  shame  upon  them  and  their  withered  crook 
edness,  and  their  rottenness  is  a  slimy  desecration  of 
the  sweetness  and  purity  of  nature. 

His  life  was  a  succession  of  rapid  changes :  every 
thing,  like  his  pictures  of  the  People  of  the  Abyss, 
always  in  extreme.  Now  he  is  in  the  Far  East  as 
war  correspondent;  now  he  is  in  Mexico.  He  will 
make  a  journey  around  the  world  in  his  own  boat 
especially  made  after  his  own  specifications,  and  to 
pay  for  it  he  will  pour  out  feverishly  story  after 
story.  He  will  have  a  ranch  that  is  a  veritable 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  115 

kingdom:  there  shall  be  planted  thirty  thousand 
eucalyptus-trees,  there  shall  be  a  big  house,  and 
there  shall  be  great  herds  of  choicest  stock,  and 
again  the  feverish  writing  of  stories  and  magazine 
articles  and  letters  hot-footed  to  his  publishers  for 
advances  upon  royalties.  The  mere  quantity  of 
his  work  is  staggering.  In  the  sixteen  years  of  his 
literary  life  he  wrote  nineteen  complete  novels, 
eighteen  short  story  collections  with  a  total  of  152 
stories,  three  plays,  and  eight  other  books,  auto 
biographical  or  sociological. — forty-eight  volumes 
already  in  print,  besides  six  or  eight  others  to  be 
collected  from  the  periodicals  or  from  unpublished 
manuscripts. 

After  the  quantity  one  is  next  surprised  by  the 
heterogeneousness  of  his  output,  its  unevenness  of 
texture  and  of  content,  its  vagaries,  its  wide  domain 
of  subject.  To  read  Jack  London  straight  through 
is  to  emerge  in  confusion:  a  swift-running  film  of 
vignette-like  pictures;  hobbies  furiously  ridden; 
headlong  narrative;  wild  snapshots  of  jungle  and 
borealis,  of  naked  head-hunters  arid  fur-muffled 
dog. drivers.  Everywhere  superlatives  and  extremes  ; 
everywhere  antithesis:  soap-box  shrillness  and  har 
monious  music;  poverty  of  style  and  sonorous  or- 
nateness  ;  vulgarity,  sublimity ;  realism,  romanticism ; 
brutality  and  humanitarianism ;  always  superlatives 
and  exaggerations  in  wild  riot — the  astonishing 


116  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

hodgepodge  we  call  Jack  London's  writings. 
If  we  do  not  understand  the  man  it  is  not  because 
he  has  not  put  himself  upon  record.  His  con 
fessions  bewilder  us  by  their  quantity  and  by  their 
brutal  frankness.  How  dare  one  open  one's  soul  as 
he  has  done  in  "John  Barleycorn"  and  'The  Road"? 
He  does  not  apologize,  he  does  not  qualify  the 
record  wtth  extenuation,  he  does  not  even  present 
the  story  as  a  warning  to  others.  "The  Road,"  for 
instance,  is  an  amazing  book :  the  point  of  view  from 
cover  to  cover  is  that  of  the  hobo.  Organized  so 
ciety  is  a  thing  to  be  preyed  upon  with  as  clear  a 
conscience  as  one  would  have  in  preying  upon  the 
wild  forest  for  its  fruits  and  its  game.  He  goes  into 
detail  about  the  web  of  lies  unblushingly  told  kind- 
hearted  old  ladies  who  pitied  him,  lies  told  the 
police,  lies  told  along  every  mile  of  ten  thousand 
miles  of  road,  and  he  does  it  with  the  air  of  one 
who  expects  to  be  applauded  for  his  smartness. 
He  can  even  hold  up  his  hobo  period  with  com 
mendation  as  a  seminar  in  which  he  learned  the  art 
of  fiction.  "Art  is  only  consummate  artfulness,"  he 
says,  and  by  artfulness  he  means  lying  with  imagina 
tion  and  artistic  detail.  And  he  illustrates  the  point 
with  the  story  of  how  he  escaped  from  the  police 
court  in  Winnipeg,  by  telling  on  the  impulse  of  the 
moment  a  detailed  and  realistic  story  of  his  escape 
from  the  hell-ship  Glenmore.  So  adroitly  and  crea- 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  117 

tively  did  he  lie,  he  declares,  that  a  veteran  sailor 
who  was  called  in  as  an  expert  to  cross-examine 
him  could  find  no  flaws.  "The  successful  hobo 
must  be  an  artist.  He  must  create  spontaneously 
and  instantaneously — and  not  upon  a  theme  selected 
from  the  plenitude  of  his  own  imagination,  but 
upon  the  theme  he  reads  in  the  face  of  the  person 
who  opens  the  door,  be  it  man,  woman,  or  child, 
sweet  or  crabbed,  generous  or  miserly." 

To  read  any  of  London's  work  is  to  be  in  the 
presence  of  his  own  biography:  few  authors  have 
drawn  so  freely  upon  their  own  experiences  for 
literary  material.  We  know  every  phase  of  his 
life:  "Martin  Eden/'  "The  Game,"  "The  Valley 
of  the  Moon,"  "The  Little  Lady  of  the  Big  House" 
are  autobiographical  in  thair  revelations.  He  was  as 
egocentric  as  Byron.  All  his  characters — Jacob 
Wilse,  Wolf  Larsen,  Martin  Eden,  Burning  Day 
light,  Billy  Roberts,  Dick  Forest — are  Jack  London 
in  masquerade,  or  Jack  London  as  he  dreamed 
of  himself.  Like  Byron's,  his  imagination  was 
kindled  only  by  life  translated  into  his  own  ex 
perience. 

His  confessions  help  us  to  classify  him.  We 
know  that  he  was  not  a  genius  driven  to  creation 
by  fires  within  him:  he  was  a  journalist.  He  se 
lected  literature  deliberately  as  a  profession  and 
learned  it  as  one  learns  a  trade.  Speaking  of  him- 


118  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

self  as  Martin  Eden,  he  discloses  the  method  of  his 
training : 

Reading  the  books  of  men  who  had  arrived,  he  noted 
every  result  achieved  by  them,  and  worked  out  the 
tricks  by  which  they  had  been  achieved — the  tricks 
of  narrative,  of  exposition,  of  style,  the  points  of  view, 
the  contrasts,  the  epigrams ;  and  of  all  of  these  he  made 
lists  for  study.  He  did  not  ape :  he  sought  principles. 
He  drew  up  lists  of  effective  and  fetching  manner 
isms,  till  out  of  many  such,  culled  from  many  writers, 
he  was  able  to  educe  the  general  principles  of  man 
nerism,  and,  thus  equipped,  he  cast  about  for  new  and 
original  ones  of  his  own,  and  to  weigh  and  measure 
and  appraise  them  properly. 

And  so  on  and  on.  Thus  in  cold  blood  he  learned 
his  trade,  and  as  he  learned  it  he  tested  and  studied 
'his  market,  like  a  manufacturer  of  collars  or  a 
maker  of  break  fast- foods.  What  did  the  literary 
market  demand  in  1898?  Listen  to  Max  Irwin  in 
London's  story,  "Amateur  Night" : 

Get  the  atmosphere,  the  color,  strong  color,  lots  of 
it.  Dig  right  in  with  both  hands,  and  get  the  essence 
of  it,  the  spirit,  the  significance.  What  does  it  mean? 
Find  out  what  it  means.  That 's  what  you  're  there 
for.  That 's  what  the  readers  of  the  "Sunday  Intelli 
gencer"  want  to  know.  Be  terse  in  style,  vigorous  of 
phrase,  apt,  concretely  apt,  in  similitude.  Avoid 
commonplaces  and  platitudes.  Exercise  selection. 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  119 

Seize  upon  things  salient,  eliminate  the  rest,  and  you 
have  pictures.  Paint  these  pictures  in  words — the 
"Intelligencer"  will  have  you.  Put  a  snapper  at  the 
end,  so  if  they  are  crowded  for  space  they  can  cut  off 
your  contents  anywhere,  reattach  the  snapper,  and  the 
story  will  still  retain  form. 

Thus  did  Jack  London,  vagabond  and  adventurer, 
make  himself  into  a  literary  artist. 


in 

It  was  his  Alaska  stories  that  gave  him  his  first 
hearing.  He  had  the  good  fortune  to  speak  at  the 
one  moment  when  all  would  listen.  In  1898  the 
imagination  of  the  world  had  been  stirred  by  the 
Klondike  gold  strike,  and  everywhere  there  was 
demand  for  material  that  was  concrete,  circum 
stantial,  hot  from  first-hand  observation.  Of  Lon 
don's  first  six  books  all  save  one,  a  juvenile  in  "St. 
Nicholas,"  were  tales  of  the  Alaska  gold  fields, 
vivid  with  pictures,  breathing  everywhere  actual 
ity;  and  it  is  upon  these  five — 'The  Son  of  the 
Wolf,"  "The  God  of  His  Fathers,"  "A  Daughter  of 
the  Snows,"  "Children  of  the  Frost,"  and  "The 
Call  of  the  Wild,"  the  last  issued  in  1903 — that 
his  ultimate  fame  must  rest.  All  are  of  short  story 
texture:  even  the  novel  "A  Daughter  of  the  Snows" 


120  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

is  a  series  of  episodes,  and  "The  Call  of  the  Wild" 
might  have  for  its  sub-title  "Seven  Episodes  in  the 
Life  of  the  Dog  Buck." 

His  method  was  the  method  of  Kipling,  as  Kip 
ling's  had  been  that  of  Bret  Harte.  He  would  pre 
sent  a  field  new  to  literature  by  means  of  startling 
pictures;  swift  scenes  flashed  upon  a  screen  with 
emphasis,  even  to  exaggeration,  upon  the  unique  and 
unusual.  Everywhere  Bret  Harte  paradoxes : 
Hay  Stockard  is  accused  by  the  missionary  of 
breaking  all  the  commandments,  and  he  is  a  blas 
phemer  until  "From  the  slipping  of  a  snow-shoe 
thong  to  the  forefront  of  sudden  death  his  Indian 
wife  would  gauge  the  occasion  by  the  pitch  and 
volume  of  his  blasphemy,"  and  yet  he  dies  rather 
than  renounce  the  God  of  his  Puritan  fathers.  In 
all  this  early  fiction  the  rush  of  the  narrative  is 
compelling  and  the  seeming  fidelity  to  nature  in  the 
background  convincing.  For  instance  the  opening 
chapters  of  "A  Daughter  of  the  Snows,"  picturing 
the  landing  in  Alaska  of  Frona  Wilse,  the  baggage- 
strewn  beach,  the  excited  mob  gathering  for  the 
march,  the  horrors  of  the  long  trail,  the  discarded 
dunnage  and  crippled  victims  strewn  along  the 
miles,  the  squalid  night  camps,  and  over  it  all  the 
madness  and  lure  of  the  goal  that  stripped  men  to 
the  primitive  elements  of  character — all  this  the 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  121 

reader  accepts  without  question  as  a  living  document 
in  the  history  of  a  vanished  era. 

We  are  won  at  the  start  by  the  positiveness  of 
the  author.  We  must  take  him  on  faith:  few  of 
us  know  how  civilized  men  behave  in  the  areas  be 
yond  the  bounds  of  civilization,  how  men  die  of 
starvation,  how  dogs  deport  themselves  in  the 
Arctic  night.  He  tells  us  in  minute  detail,  with 
Defoe-like  concreteness  of  touch  upon  touch.  But 
are  we  certain  it  is  the  truth?  We  are  not.  He  is 
no  more  a  realist  than  was  Harte.  Like  Harte  he 
is  writing  from  memory  and  imagination  the  story 
of  a  vanished  period,  a  brief  and  picturesque  day 
in  a  new  environment,  where  youth  is  supreme  and 
alone,  and  his  fancy  hovers  over  it  fondly,  and 
paints  it  and  exaggerates  it  and  idealizes  it  even  to 
romance. 

It  was  a  weird  scene ;  an  anachronism.  To  the  south 
the  nineteenth  century  was  reeling  off  the  few  years  of 
its  last  decade;  here  flourished  man  primeval,  a  shade 
removed  from  the  prehistoric  cave-dweller,  a  forgotten 
fragment  of  the  Elder  World.  The  tawny  wolf-dogs 
sat  between  their  skin-clad  masters  or  fought  for  room, 
the  firelight  cast  backward  from  their  red  eyes  and 
slavered  fangs.  The  woods  in  ghostly  shroud,  slept  on 
unheeding.  The  White  Silence,  for  the  moment  driven 
to  the  rimming  forest,  seemed  ever  crushing  inward ; 


122  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

the  stars  danced  with  great  leaps,  as  is  their  wont  in 
the  time  of  the  Great  Cold;  while  the  Spirits  of  the 
Pole  trailed  their  robes  of  glory  athwart  the  heavens. 

His  characters  are  not  actual  men  whom  he  has 
himself  seen  and  known:  they  are  demigods,  the 
unsung  heroes  of  a  heroic  age  now  put  into  epic 
setting.  For  all  of  them  might  be  inscribed  the 
epithet  given  to  one:  "So,  many  an  unsung  wan 
derer  fought  his  last  and  died  under  the  cold  fires  of 
the  Aurora,  as  did  his  brothers  in  burning  sands  and 
reeking  jungles,  and  as  they  shall  continue  to  do 
till  the  fulness  of  time  and  the  destiny  of  their  race 
be  achieved." 

Moreover,  he  adds  to  this  the  romance  of  a 
fading  race.  He  dates  'The  God  of  His  Fathers" 
at  "the  moment  when  the  stone  age  was  drawing 
to  a  close."  His  Indian  women  are  a  remarkable 
group:  Ruth,  wife  of  Mason,  in  "The  White 
Silence" ;  Madeline  in  "An  Odyssey  of  the  North" ; 
Unga  in  "The  Wife  of  a  King";  Passuk,  wife  of 
Sitka  Charley;  Zarniska,  wife  of  Scruff  Mackenzie; 
Sipsu,  the  Chief's  daughter,  in  "Where  the  Trail 
Forks";  and  Killisnoo,  wife  of  Tomm,  introduced 
with  the  remark :  "Takes  a  woman  to  breed  a  man. 
Takes  a  she-cat  not  a  cow  to  mother  a  tiger."  By 
no  means  are  they  realistic  studies.  They  are 
drawn  from  imagination  rather  than  from  notes 
made  after  observation;  they  are  the  type  of  primi- 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  123 

live  super-woman  their  author's  imagination  de 
lighted  in — Jees  Uck  for  instance,  with  her  ' 'great 
blazing  black  eyes — the  half-caste  eye,  round,  full- 
orbed,  and  sensuous,"  or  Winapie,  the  Koyokuk  girl, 
whom  Philip  Payne  married  and  was  true  to  even 
when  the  San  Francisco  belle,  once  his  fiancee, 
came  to  Alaska  to  find  him : 

Eyes  piercing  black  and  large,  with  a  traditionary 
hint  of  obliqueness,  looked  forth  from  under  clear- 
stencilled,  clean-arching  brows.  Without  suggesting 
cadaverousness,  though  high-boned  and  prominent,  the 
cheeks  fell  away  and  met  in  a  mouth,  thin-lipped  and 
softly  strong.  It  was  a  face  which  advertised  the 
dimmest  trace  of  ancient  Mongol  blood,  after  long 
centuries  of  wandering,  to  the  parent  stem.  This  effect 
was  heightened  by  the  delicately  aquiline  nose  with  its 
thin  trembling  nostrils,  and  by  the  general  air  of  eagle 
wildness  which  seemed  to  characterize  not  only  the 
face,  but  the  creature  herself.  She  was  in  fact,  the 
Tartar  type  modified  to  idealization,  and  the  tribe  of 
Red  Indian  is  lucky  that  breeds  such  a  unique  body 
once  in  a  score  of  generations. 

Romanticized  and  overdrawn  as  unquestionably 
they  are,  nevertheless  these  women  are  the  most 
vital  and  convincing  of  all  Jack  London's  characters. 
They  are  his  only  additions  to  the  gallery  of  original 
characters  in  American  fiction.  Their  doglike  fidel 
ity  and  honesty,  their  loyalty  and  self-sacrifice,  their 
primitive  resourcefulness  in  danger  and  privation, 


124  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

excite  unconsciously  our  admiration  and  our  pity. 
It  is  not  too  sweeping  to  say  that  the  primary 
purpose  of  all  London's  early  fiction  was  pictorial. 
He  would  reproduce  for  us  the  Whife~""frorth. 
Everywhere  pictures,  flash-lights  not  only  upon  the 
surfaces  of  the  scene  but  into  the  heart  and  mean 
ing  of  it.  One  might  fill  a  book  with  vignettes  as 
sharply  cut  as  figures  in  a  frieze : 

It  was  midday.  To  the  south,  just  clearing  the 
bleak  Henderson  Divide,  poised  the  cold-disked  sun. 
On  either  hand  the  sun-dogs  blazed.  The  air  was  a 
gossamer  of  glittering  frost.  In  the  foreground,  be 
side  the  trail,  a  wolf-dog,  bristling  with  frost,  thrust 
a  long  snout  heavenward  and  moaned. 

Or  again: 

Overhead,  the  Aurora,  a  gorgeous  wanton,  flaunted 
miracles  of  color,  beneath  lay  the  sleeping  town.  Far 
below,  a  solitary  dog  gave  tongue.  The  king  again  be 
gan  to  speak,  but  the  Kid  pressed  his  hand  for  silence. 
The  sound  multiplied.  Dog  after  dog  took  up  the 
strain  till  the  full-throated  chorus  swayed  the  night. 
To  him  who  hears  for  the  first  time  this  weird  song, 
is  told  the  first  and  greatest  secret  of  the  Northland; 
to  him  who  has  heard  it  often,  it  is  the  solemn  knell  of 
lost  endeavor.  It  is  the  plaint  of  tortured  souls, 
for  in  it  is  invested  the  heritage  of  the  North, 
the  sufferings  of  countless  generations- — the  warn 
ing  and  the  requiem  to  the  world's  estrays. 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  125 

And  this  voice  of  the  wild  he  has  tried  to  interpret. 
He  would,  like  Thoreau,  peer  behind  the  scene  and 
catch  a  glimpse  of  the  sources  of  it. 

With  the  Aurora  Borealis  flaming  coldly  overhead, 
or  the  stars  leaping  in  the  frost  dance,  and  the 
land  numb  and  frozen  under  its  pall  of  snow, 
this  song  of  the  huskies  might  have  been  the 
defiance  of  life,  only  it  was  pitched  in  minor  key, 
with  long-drawn  wailings  and  half-sobs,  and  was  more 
the  pleading  of  life,  the  articulate  travail  of  existence. 
It  was  an  old  song,  old  as  the  breed  itself — one  of  the 
first  songs  of  the  younger  world  in  a  day  when  songs 
were  sad.  It  was  invested  with  the  woe  of  un 
numbered  generations,  this  plaint  by  which  Buck  was 
so  strangely  stirred.  When  he  moaned  and  sobbed, 
it  was  with  the  pain  of  living  that  was  of  old  the  pain 
of  his  wild  fathers,  and  the  fear  and  mystery  of  the 
cold  and  dark  that  was  to  them  fear  and  mystery. 
And  that  he  should  be  stirred  by  it  marked  the  com 
pleteness  with  which  he  harked  back  through  the  ages 
of  fire  and  roof  to  the  raw  beginnings  of  life  in  the 
howling  ages. 

His  affinity  is  with  Conrad;  with  him  he  might 
have  said,  "My  task  which  I  am  trying  to  achieve 
is,  by  the  power  of  the  written  word,  to  make  you 
hear,  to  make  you  feel — it  is,  before  all,  to  make 
you  see." 

He  achieved  this  end  most  fully  in  "The  Call  of 
the  Wild,"  the  crowning  work  of  his  first  period 


126  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

and  indeed  of  his  whole  career.  His  zest  of  life 
is  in  it  and  the  undiminished  enthusiasm  of  youth. 
It  is  his  most  perfect  balance  between  the  realistic 
and  the  romantic,  j  There  are  no  digressions ;  there 
is  no  social  philosophy  protuberant  and  no  propa 
ganda.  One  who  reads  it  surrenders  to  the  romance 
of  the  North  as  completely  as  one  surrenders  to  the 
romance  of  medievalism  when  one  reads  Scott.  Its 
success  was  instantaneous  as  it  should  have  been ; 
from  the  moment  it  first  appeared  its  author's  liter 
ary  place  was  secure  in  all  the  English-speaking 
world.  Jack  London  had  arrived :  and  yet,  even  as  we 
say  this,  we  must  add  that  the  very  year  of  his  arrival 
is  the  date  of  the  beginning  of  his  literary  decline. 
The  causes  of  this  decline  lay  in  the  author's 
temperament  and  in  the  nature  of  his  literary  field. 
In  reality,  after  the  first  five  books,  he  exhausted  his 
Alaska  claim;  his  lode  petered  out.  Harte  and 
even  Kipling  had  discovered  that  to  confine  oneself 
to  the  recording  of  a  primitive  society  is  soon  to  run 
out  of  material.  London  had  added  nothing  to 
Harte's  outfit  save  a  new  set  of  drop  scenery,  a 
new  fresh  vigor  of  treatment,  and  a  Gogol-like 
gruesomeness  of  detail,  and  these  now  had  grown 
familiar.  But  the  enormous  vogue  of  "The  Call  of 
the  Wild'*  gave  him  at  once  new  latitude.  He 
cleared  his  desk  of  early  material — "The  Faith  of 
Men,"  "The  War  of  the  Classes,"  "Moon  Face," 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  127 

and  the  like — and  then  began  to  write  as  he  pleased : 
his  market  allowed  it.  By  nature  and  training  he 
was  an  extreme  idealist ;  a  revolutionist,  indeed. 
The  blood  of  "Priest"  Jones,  the  circuit-rider,  was 
in  his  veins.  He,  too,  was  a  preacher,  though  not 
of  conventional  religion,  which  to  him  was  anath 
ema,  but  of  an  individualistic  brand  of  social  philos 
ophy.  From  this  time  on  he  was  constantly  astride 
of  hobbies,  some  of  which  he  rode  furiously.  He 
had  discovered  in  his  tumultuous  reading  the  evolu 
tionary  theory,  the  recapitulation  theory,  Gogol, 
Spencer,  Karl  Marx,  Nietzsche.  At  the  time  of 
his  death  he  was,  to  quote  his  wife's  words,  "enor 
mously  interested  in  psychoanalysis,"  and  had  he 
lived  would  have  written  a  series  of  novels  con 
cerned  with  "research  into  the  primitive,  into  the 
noumenon  of  things,  in  order  to  understand  the 
becoming  of  what  man  is  to-day,"  novels  un 
doubtedly  of  the  type  of  "The  Star  Rover." 

He  rode  his  theories  into  the  fiction  of  this  period 
with  the  unction  of  the  novitiate  who  has  discovered 
what  to  him  is  a  new  world.  He  would  entertain 
his  readers,  but  he  would  teach  them  at  the  same 
time;  he  would  reform  the  world  while  it  believed 
it  was  playing.  He  has  explained  his  theory  in 
"Martin  Eden" : 

Apparently  it  was  to  be  a  rattling  sea  story,  a  tale  of 


128  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

.twentieth  century  adventure  and  romance,  handling 
real  characters,  in  a  real  world,  under  real  conditions. 
'But  beneath  the  swing  and  go  of  the  story  was  to  be 
something  else — something  that  the  superficial  reader 
would  never  discern  and  which,  on  the  other  hand, 
would  not  diminish  in  any  way  the  interest  and  enjoy 
ment  for  such  a  reader.  It  was  this,  and  not  the  mere 
story,  that  impelled  Martin  to  write  it. 

His  theory  is  wrong.  To  realize  how  wrong  it 
is  one  needs  but  to  read  "The  Sea  Wolf."  The 
story  begins  tremendously:  the  opening  chapters 
are  as  moving  as  anything  in  American  fiction,  but 
before  it  has  reached  its  middle  point  its  failure 
is  so  apparent  that  it  is  used  in  college  classes  as 
one  of  the  best  examples  to  be  found  of  extreme 
faultiness  in  novel  construction.  It  was  so  with 
all  his  later  novels.  "Burning  Daylight,"  for  ex 
ample,  brilliant  as  it  occasionally  is  in  episode,  is 
a  mass  of  materials  for  fiction  rather  than  a  novel. 
The  first  half  of  it  might  be  called  "Miscellaneous 
Adventures  in  the  Life  of  a  Super-man" :  his  way 
of  celebrating  his  birthday,  his  record  trip  with  the 
Yukon  Mail,  his  fight  with  starvation,  his  discovery 
of  Klondike  gold,  his  adventure  with  the  stock 
market,  his  sensational  hold-up  of  the  New  York 
brokers,  etc.  The  heroine,  as  in  "The  Sea  Wolf," 
is  not  introduced  until  the  story  is  half  told,  and  she 
seems  to  be  necessary  then  only  to  teach  the  super- 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  129 

man  in  long  lectures  the  elements  of  socialism. 
The  last  half  of  the  book  is  propaganda.  "The 
Valley  of  the  Moon"  is  three  stories :  how  Billy 
Roberts,  prize-fighter,  wooed  and  married  Saxon, 
the  laundry  worker — excellent;  the  story  of  the 
Oakwood  Strike  and  the  brutalization  of  Billy; 
and  the  flight  from  the  city  and  the  idealization  of 
the  country — nauseatingly  sweet.  The  second  part 
is  painted  black  to  serve  as  the  foil  to  the  third  part. 
As  with  "The  Little  Lady  of  the  Big  House,"  the 
book  is  not  a  novel  but  propaganda.  Even  "White 
Fang,"  his  second  dog  book,  is  a  tract  in  disguise. 
Unquestionably  he  was  not  a  novelist:  he  was 
too  impatient,  too  headlong,  to  round  out  a  large 
plan.  He  had  not  the  patience  to  revise;  he  re 
fused  to  read  his  earlier  chapters  day  by  day  as  he 
proceeded.  As  a  result,  the  novels  grew  by  ac 
cretions,  and  became,  like  "The  Little  Lady  of  the 
Big  House,"  masses  of  loosely-bound  material  for 
novels.  Had  patience  been  granted  him,  and  re 
straint,  he  might,  perhaps,  have  enlarged  his  vig 
nettes  into  careful  wholes;  into  novels  even.  One 
cannot  deny  power  to  an  artist  who  can  cut  a  cameo 
like  this: 

And  then,  suddenly,  before  his  eyes,  on  the  foul 
plaster-wall  appeared  a  vision.  He  stood  in  front  of  a 
gloomy  tenement  house.  It  was  night-time,  in  the 
East  End  of  London,  and  before  him  stood  Margey,  a 


130  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

little  factory  girl  of  fifteen.  He  had  seen  her  home 
after  the  bean-feast.  She  lived  in  that  gloomy  tene 
ment,  a  place  not  fit  for  swine.  His  hand  was  going 
out  to  hers  as  he  said  good  night.  She  had  put  her  lips 
up  to  be  kissed,  but  he  was  n't  going  to  kiss  her. 
Somehow  he  was  afraid  of  her.  And  then  her  hand 
closed  on  his  and  pressed  feverishly.  He  felt  her 
callouses  grind  and  grate  on  his,  and  a  great  wave  of 
pity  welled  over  him.  He  saw  her  yearning,  hungry 
eyes,  and  her  ill-fed  female  form  which  had  been 
rushed  into  a  frightened  and  ferocious  maturity;  then 
he  put  his  arms  about  her  in  large  tolerance  and  stooped 
and  kissed  her  on  the  lips.  Her  glad  little  cry  rang  in 
his  ears,  and  he  felt  her  clinging  to  him  like  a  cat. 
Poor  little  starveling!  He  continued  to  stare  at  the 
vision  of  what  had  happened  in  the  long  ago.  His  flesh 
was  crawling  as  it  crawled  that  night  when  she  clung  to 
him,  and  his  heart  was  warm  with  pity.  It  was  a  gray 
scene,  greasy  gray,  and  the  rain  drizzled  greasily  on  the 
pavement  stones.  And  then  a  radiant  glory  shone  on 
the  wall,  and  up  through  the  other  vision,  displacing  it, 
glimmered  Her  pale  face  under  its  crown  of  golden 
hair,  remote  and  inaccessible  as  a  star. 

His  range,  however,  is  small.  Of  one  whole  rich 
area  of  human  society  he  knew  only  the  surface. 
The  sordid  misery  of  his  childhood  had  warped 
his  sense  of  values  and  narrowed  the  circle  of 
human  characters  that  he  knew  intimately  enough 
to  portray  as  a  novelist  should  portray  characters. 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  131 

His  world,  therefore,  is  lopsided  and  misleading. 
His  socialism,  unrelieved  as  it  is  by  humor,  is  often 
ludicrous.  His  gospel,  as  one  finds  it  in  'The  Sea 
Wolf,"  for  instance,  and  "Martin  Eden,"  is  frankly 
and  outspokenly  materialistic,  and  materialism  is 
the  antipodes  of  all  that  we  denominate  art. 

Moreover,  within  his  own  chosen  field  he  is  limited 
of  range.  After  the  voyage  of  the  Snark  he  added 
the  South  Seas  to  his  literary  area  and  tried  to  do 
for  them  what  he  had  done  for  Alaska,  but  it  was 
only  a  changing  of  scenery.  Instead  of  intense 
cold,  intense  heat;  instead  of  the  aurora,  the  glamour 
of  the  tropic  night.  The  novel  "Adventure"  is 
"A  Daughter  of  the  Snows"  transferred  to  the 
Solomon  Islands,  and  Frona  Wilse  changes  her 
name  to  Joan  Lackland.  Smoke  Bellew  becomes 
the  David  Grief  of  "A  Son  of  the  Sun."  But 
there  is  a  falling  off  in  zest  and  vision.  The  South 
Sea  tales  do  not  leave  so  wholesome  an  impression 
as  the  earlier  tales  of  the  Arctic.  He  has  chosen 
only  the  loathsome,  the  sensational,  the  unique ;  and 
one  feels  that  he  has  chosen  them  simply  to  make 
salable  copy.  There  is  an  excess  of  glamour  and 
color  expressed  by  a  profusion  of  hyphenated  ad 
jectives: 

Aloft  at  giddy  mast-heads  oscillating  above  the  decks 
of  ships,  I  have  gazed  on  sun-flashed  water  where  coral 


132  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

growths  iridesced  from  profounds  of  turquoise  deeps, 
and  conned  the  ships  into  safety  of  mirrored  lagoons 
where  the  anchor  rumbled  down  close  to  palm-fronded 
beaches  of  sea-pointed  coral  rock,  etc. 

Or  this  from  "A  Son  of  the  Sun": 

But  over  and  beyond  was  his  love  of  all  the  other 
things  that  go  to  make  up  a  South  Seas  rover's  life — 
the  smell  of  the  reef ;  the  infinite  exquisiteness  of  the 
shoals  of  living  coral  in  the  mirror-surfaced  lagoons; 
the  crashing  sunrises  of  raw  colors  spread  with  lawless 
cunning ;  the  palm-tufted  islets  set  in  turquoise  deeps ; 
the  tonic  wine  of  the  trade-winds ;  the  heave  and  send 
of  the  orderly  crested  seas;  the  moving  deck  beneath 
his  feet,  the  straining  canvas  overhead;  the  flower- 
garlanded,  golden-glowing  men  and  maids  of  Polynesia, 
half  children  and  half  gods;  and  even  the  howling 
savages  of  Melanesia,  head-hunters  and  man-eaters, 
half -devil  and  all  the  beast. 

Or  again : 

I  have  loved  princesses  of  royal  houses  in  the  tropic- 
warmed  and  sun-scented  night,  where  black  slaves 
fanned  the  sultry  air  with  peacock  plumes,  while  from 
afar,  across  the  palms  and  fountains,  drifted  the  roar 
ing  of  lions  and  the  cries  of  jackals. 

His  sea  tales  are  contemporary  with  Conrad's 
and  at  many  points  there  is  parallelism.  Both 
deal  largely  with  outcasts;  both  exalt  their  leading 
characters  into  super-men — Captain  MacWhir  in 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  133 

"Typhoon,"  Rasumov  with  his  "men  like  us  leave 
no  posterity" ;  both  tell  graphically  of  typhoon  and 
violence;  both  are  sonorous  and  gorgeous  of  diction. 
But  Conrad  is  objective  and  London  is  prevailingly 
subjective;  Conrad  knows  the  sea  better  and  he 
loves  it  with  his  whole  soul.  And  he  is  more 
human.  To  him  sailors  are  "an  unorganized 
brotherhood" :  in  such  work  as  "The  Nigger  of  the 
Narcissus"  there  is  almost  a  grotesque  display  of 
tenderness.  London  could  never  close  a  novel  or  a 
short  story  with  a  passage  like  this :  "Good  by, 
brothers !  You  were  a  good  crowd.  As  good  a 
crowd  as  ever  fisted  with  wild  cries  the  beating 
canvas  of  a  heavy  foresail;  or  tossing  aloft,  invisi 
ble  in  the  night,  gave  back  yell  for  yell  to  a 
westerly  gale."  The  reason,  perhaps,  lies  in  Con 
rad's  own  dictum :  "Failing  the  resolution  to  hold 
our  peace,  we  can  talk  only  about  ourselves." 

IV 

The  final  literary  style  of  Jack  London — and 
doubtless  it  is  true  of  all  men — was  the  product  of 
his  own  temperament.  He  was  too  individualistic, 
too  impatient  long  to  follow  the  lead  of  other 
men.  Directed  as  he  was  at  first  by  Kipling  and 
Gogol  and  O.  Henry,  he  soon  divested  himself  of 
their  mannerisms  and  voiced  only  himself.  He 


134  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

was  writing  now  furiously  for  money  and  only  for 
money.  In  an  interview  published  with  his  sanc 
tion  at  the  height  of  his  career,  he  declared  that  he 
did  not  write  because  he  loved  writing.  He  hated 
it. 

Every  story  that  I  write  is  for  the  money  that  will 
come  to  me.  I  always  write  what  the  editors  want,  not 
what  I  'd  like  to  write.  I  grind  out  what  the  Capitalist 
editors  want,  and  the  editors  buy  only  what  the  business 
and  editorial  departments  permit.  The  editors  are 
not  interested  in  the  truth. 

Everything  in  his  life  during  the  last  decade 
of  his  work  called  aloud  for  money,  and  his  only 
source  of  income  was  his  pen.  For  a  man  of  his 
temperament  there  could  be  but  one  result:  one 
finds  almost  nothing  in  his  writings  that  has  been 
brooded  over,  that,  like  ripened  wine,  has  body 
to  it  and  bouquet.  One  thousand  words  a  day, 
every  day  in  the  week,  without  vacation  or  rest, 
excited  work  unrevised  and  unreturned  to,  is  jour 
nalism,  the  ephemerae  of  the  Sunday  supplement. 

His  temperament  is  everywhere  visible.  His 
sentences  are  short,  often  mere  members  of  a  sen 
tence — the  unit  of  measure  of  one  excitable  and 
headlong.  There  is  no  reserve,  no  restraint :  every 
where  exaggeration,  superlatives;  everything  in  ex 
treme.  In  his  later  work  he  used  the  adjective 


The  Prophet  of  the  *Last  Frontier  135 

"abysmal"  until  it  became  a  mannerism  that  could 
even  creep  into  one  of  his  titles;  'The  Abysmal 
Brute."  His  hero  catches  a  mountain  trout: 

He  hooked  a  monster  steelhead,  standing  to  his  neck 
in  the  ice-cold  water  of  the  Roque  and  righting  for 
forty  minutes,  with  screaming  reel,  ere  he  drew  his 
finny  prize  to  the  bank,  and  with  the  scalp  yell  of  a  Co- 
manche  jumped  and  clutched  it  by  the  gills. 

Everything  at  this  intense  pitch.  Is  he  in  the  Arc 
tic?  "It  was  very  warm,  barely  ten  below  zero." 
"It  was  a  clear  cold  night,  not  over  cold — not 
over  forty  below."  "It  was  the  land  where  whiskey 
freezes  solid  and  may  be  used  as  a  paper-weight 
the  greater  part  of  the  year."  Does  he  need  a 
central  figure  for  his  tale?  He  must  have  a  super 
man,  a  Burning  Daylight  or  a  Wolf  Larsen.  The 
Wolf  is  wholly  unschooled;  he  has  lived  his  whole 
life  among  ignorant  and  brutal  seamen  on  sailing 
vessels;  he  is  muscled  like  a  gorilla  and  has  the 
gorilla's  code  of  ethics;  yet  he  is  an  authority  on 
the  Bible  and  he  has  Herbert  Spencer  at  his  tongue's 
end.  Even  on  literary  topics  he  can  render  tongue- 
tied  and  silent  Humphrey  Van  Weyden,  "the  Dean 
of  American  Letters  the  Second,"  Van  Weyden  "the 
cold-blooded  fish,  the  emotionless  monster,  the 
analytical  demon."  Are  we  convinced?  On  the 
contrary  we  begin  to  doubt  the  accuracy  even  of  his 


136  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

autobiographical  confessions.  Can  this  man  tell 
the  truth?  Will  his  imagination  and  melodramatic 
impulses  permit  him,  even  if  he  tries?  Can  we  be 
lieve,  for  example,  that  a  healthy  country  boy — not 
a  De  Quincey  under  the  influence  of  drugs — can 
have  dreams  as  extreme  and  as  circumstantial  as 
those  he  describes  in  the  autobiographical  parts  of 
"Before  Adam"? 

That  London  devoutly  believed  that  he  was  a 
realist  and  that  his  extreme  pictures  came  only  from 
his  thoroughness,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  In 
"Martin  Eden"  he  has  said :  "Realism  is  imperative 
to  my  nature,  and  the  bourgeois  spirit  hates  realism. 
The  bourgeois  is  cowardly.  It  is  afraid  of  life." 
But  realism  is  science,  and  scientist  London  was 
not.  Surely  his  is  not  the  realism  of  the  French 
school  that  filled  endless  note-books  with  careful 
observations  before  it  began  to  write.  He  has 
been  on  the  spot,  to  be  sure,  and  the  reader  is  never 
allowed  for  a  moment  to  lose  sight  of  the  fact,  but 

! 


he  works  not  from  scientifically  collected  data.     He 


can  weave  a  glorious  web  of  impressions  of  an  era 
over  which  time  is  throwing  a  mellowing  haze,  he 
can  heighten  its  picturesque  places  and  exaggerate 
its  lights  and  shades,  but  this  is  not  realism. 
Wherever  he  touches  the  things  that  we  know,  we 
are  likely  to  find  him  even  grotesquely  unrealistic. 
His  dialogue  seldom  rings  true,  never,  indeed  in  his 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  137 

later  novels.  David  Grief  in  "Feathers  of  the 
Sun"  is  met  by  a  trader  and  accosted  in  this  O. 
Henry-like  manner :  "You  '11  have  to  pay  your 
legitimate  import  duties  same  as  any  other  trader 
with  mind  intent  on  robbing  the  gentle  Polynesian 
savage  on  coral  isles  implanted."  The  half-breed 
Sitka  Charley  talks  dialect  through  the  first  half  of 
the  tale  and  then  at  the  climax  launches  out  in 
Addisonian  balances  like  these :  "Brothers,  my 
blood  is  red  with  Siwash,  but  my  heart  is  white. 
To  the  faults  of  my  fathers  I  owe  the  one,  to  the 
virtue  of  my  friends  the  other.  When  I  speak 
harshly  to  one  of  your  own  kind,  I  know  you  will 
not  take  it  amiss,"  and  so  on  to  the  end  of  the 
speech.  It  is  London  in  his  study,  not  Sitka 
Charley.  The  costume  may  deceive  us,  but  the 
voice  is  the  voice  of  London. 

We  may  make  the  same  observation  upon  his 
feminine  characters :  they  are  not  nature ;  they  are 
Jack  London.  A  single  illustration  will  suffice. 
The  novel  is  "A  Daughter  of  the  Snows."  It  is 
in  the  middle  of  the  Arctic  night.  The  spirit 
thermometer  registers  sixty-five  degrees  below  zero, 
and  Frona  Wilse  from  sheer  excess  of  vitality  has 
harnessed  her  dogs  and  taken  an  eight-mile  run  at 
top  speed.  Out  in  the  frozen  waste  across  the 
river  from  Dawson  she  happens  by  pure  luck  to 
stumble  upon  Lucile,  a  fallen  woman,  a  professional 


138  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

dancer  in  saloons,  a  former  vaudeville  performer, 
sitting  alone  and  disconsolate  in  the  snow,  presum 
ably  lost.  One  would  suppose  that  the  finding  of 
a  feminine  cabaret  stranger  lost  in  the  snow,  away 
in  the  Arctic  waste,  the  thermometer  sixty-five 
below,  would  arouse  in  the  finder  curiosity  or  at 
least  instantly-expressed  emotion  of  some  kind. 
But  Frona  Wilse  is  not  conventional.  She  simply 
stops  her  dogs  and  asks  the  forlorn  stranger  in  the 
snow — the  mercury  still  at  sixty-five — a  question 
in  esthetics.  Is  "stern"  or  "somber"  the  proper 
adjective  to  apply  to  the  landscape  they  see  about 
them?  They  differ  instantly  in  their  opinions  and, 
the  girl  not  rising  from  the  snow,  they  begin  their 
debate. 

"That  is  because  the  lines  of  our  lives  have  been  laid 
in  different  places,"  the  other  ventured  reflectively. 
"It  is  not  what  the  landscape  is,  but  what  we  are.  If 
we  were  not,  the  landscape  would  remain,  but  without 
human  significance.  That  is  what  we  invest  it  with, 

"  'Truth  is  within  ourselves ;  it  takes  no  rise 
From  outward  things,  whatever  you  may  believe/  " 

Frona's  eyes  brightened,  and  she  went  on  to  complete 
the  passage: 

"Where  truth  abides  in  fulness,  and  around — 
There  is  an  inmost  centre  in  us  all, 

"And — and — how  does  it  go?    I  have  forgotten." 


The  Propliet  of  the  Last  Frontier    13 
"  'Wall  upon  wall,  the  gross  flesh  hems  it  in.' " 

The  woman  ceased  abruptly,  her  voice  trilling  off  into 
silvery  laughter  with  a  certain  bitter  recklessness 
which  made  Frona  inwardly  shudder. 

In  all  his  stories,  whenever  a  woman  goes  away  to 
school,  even  for  a  brief  period,  she  comes  back 
quoting  Browning  and  Bergson  and  Ibsen  and  talk 
ing  of  the  decadence  of  the  French  symbolists.  He 
lacked  humor,  and  he  knew  no  more  of  the  social 
realm  in  which  Thackeray,  for  instance,  lived,  than 
did  Dickens. 

In  the  field  of  action,  however,  especially  action 
in  the  primitive  areas  of  life,  he  stands  with  the 
masters//  Few  have  surpassed  him  in  power  to 
present  vivid  moving-pictures :  records  of  fights — • 
dog-fights,  prize-fights,  bull-fights,  the  fight  of  a  bull 
moose  with  a  wolf  pack,  the  battle  of  a  Scruff 
Mackenzie  with  a  whole  Indian  tribe,  the  over-pow 
ering  single-handed  of  a  mutinous  crew  by  a  Wolf 
Larsen,  the  stand  of  a  band  of  island  lepers  against 
the  authorities.  Scenes  of  battle  and  tempest 
arouse  his  imagination  as  nothing  else :  typhoons 
in  the  Solomon  Islands,  races  with  the  Yukon  mail, 
mutinies  at  sea,  Arctic  heroes  conquering  single- 
handed  a  whole  firm  of  Wall  Street  sharpers. 
Chapter  XXXVIII  of  "The  Mutiny  of  the  Elsi- 
nore,"  where  Pike  single-handed  fights  the  ship  off 


140  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

the  Horn,  is  as  stirring  a  bit  of  adventure  as  there 
is  in  the  literature  of  the  sea. 

In  his  own  estimation  London  was  never  a  hap 
hazard  worker.  It  was  a  part  of  his  literary  creed, 
learned  in  the  days  of  his  laborious  apprenticeship 
and  strengthened  by  the  socialism  that  became  his 
religion,  that  behind  all  art  which  is  worthy  of  the 
name  must  lie  something  more  than  appears  on  the 
surface.  "There  must  be  the  major  motif''  he 
says,  "the  big  underrunning  motif,  the  cosmic  and 
universal  thing.  I  tried  to  make  it  keep  time  to 
the  story  itself. "  This  cosmic  theme  underlies  the 
work  of  all  the  great  artists.  "There  must  be  a 
cosmic  quality  to  what  they  sing.  They  must  seize 
upon  and  press  into  enduring  art  forms  the  vital 
facts  of  our  existence.  They  must  tell  why  we  have 
lived.'*  Applying  his  test  to  Kipling,  he  says  he 
has  sung  "the  sweat  and  blood  and  toil  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race,  and  back  of  it  the  genius  of  the  race. 
And  this  is  the  cosmic  quality."  Of  his  own 
work  he  says: 

It  was  the  apotheosis  of  adventure — not  the  adven 
ture  of  the  story  books,  but  of  real  adventure:  the 
savage  task-master,  awful  of  punishment  and  awful 
of  reward,  faithless  and  whimsical,  demanding  ter 
rible  patience  and  heartbreaking  days  and  nights  of 
toil,  offering  the  blazing  sunlight  glory  or  dark  death 
at  the  end  of  thirst  and  famine  or  of  the  long  drag 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier   141 

and  monstrous  delirium  of  rotting  fever,  through 
blood  and  sweat  and  stinging  insects,  leading  up  by 
long  chains  of  petty  and  ignoble  contacts  to  royal 
culminations  and  lordly  achievements. 

And  again: 

^ss^ 

He  felt  the  stress  and  strain  of  life,  its  fears  and 
sweats  and  wild  insurgencies — surely  this  was  the 
stuff  to  write  about.  He  wanted  to  glorify  the  leaders 
of  forlorn  hopes,  the  mad  lovers,  the  giants  that 
fought  unde-  stress  and  strain,  amid  terror  and  tragedy, 
making  life  crackle  with  the  strength  of  their  en 
deavor.  And  yet  the  magazine  short  stories  seemed 
intent  on  glorifying  the  Mr.  Butlers,  the  sor 
did  dollar-chasers,  and  the  commonplace  little 
love  affairs  of  commonplace  little  men  and  women. 

At  one  time — about  1903  it  was — O.  Henry 
threw  his  influence  over  London's  short  stories, 
notably  those  in  "The  Faith  of  Men"  and  "Moon 
Face,"  but  between  London  and  O.  Henry  there 
is  this  fundamental  difference:  London  was  pas 
sionately  in  earnest;  he  wrote  without  humorous 
intent;  he  wrote  with  a  motif,  and  this  he  never 
forgot  even  in  his  most  headlong  moments  of  copy  x 
production.  Behind  his  work  was  a  principle  that  \  \ 
he  fought  for,  a  conviction  that  was  Puritanic  in 
its  intensity.  O.  Henry,  and  also  Bret  Harte,  lacked 
this  element,  and  lacking  it,  they  are  in  danger, 
despite  their  literary  cleverness  and  their  humor, 


142  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

of  falling  among  the  mere  entertainers,  useful  peo 
ple  but  not  a  class  to  be  placed  high  in  the  major 
scale  of  values. 


Were  it  not  for  this  cosmic  quality  in  London's 
work,  we  might  dismiss  "Kim  at  this  point  or  even  de 
clare  it  not  worth  while  to  consider  him  at  all 
save  as  a  picturesque  incident  in  the  history  of 
American  literature,  but,  like  Mark  Twain,  he  is 
the  interpreter  of  a  region.  In  his  underrunning 
motifs  we  find  the  underrunning  motifs  of 
a  whole  new  ej:^ofj^r^^e^gjai.iiyilkatiQn.  He 
was  not  an  entertainer  merely  any  more  than  Mark 
Twain  was  a  humorist  merely  :  he  wflft  p  voir.p, 
the  voice  of  the  new 


Rockies,     the    fjrst     rea11y_  jT^ljfQrruAn     w*4*er 
,  for  Harte  and  his  circle  were 


Easterners  who  were  temporarily  in  the  .West. 
London  was  indigenous,  a  voice  Calif  ornian  and 
only  Calif  ornian.  He_  was_Jrom  the  jDicjn£££s  ajid 
the  Argonauts,  the  blond  race  in  the  first  van  of 
the  march  into  the  unknown  beyond  the  horizon, 
and  with  them  he  lifted  his  voice  decrying  the  de 
cadent  days  that  had  followed  the  age  of  the  heroes. 
It  was  the  same  voice  that  coined  the  phrase  "the 
effete  East,"  the  old  voice  of  the  northern  blond 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier    143 

beasts  who  had  smitten  in  contempt  the  softness 
and  effeminacy  of  declining  Rome. 

He  voiced  the   romance  of   California,   its   feetj 
amid  the  ruins  of  the  stately  Spaniards,  its   face  j 
turned  to  the  Golden  Gate  and  the  Pacific.     Still  on 
its  horizon  lay  the  frontier — the  new  Eldorado  to 
the  north,  and  beyond  the  sea-rim  the  islands  of 
the  South  Seas,  the  last  domain  of  mystery,  the 
last  unconquered  bits  of  the  primitive  world. 

Moreover,  London  voiced  the  recklessness  and  the 
headlong  venturesomeness  that  came  as  a  heritage 
from  the  Argonauts.  These  early  Titans  had 
gambled  with  the  horizon.  "The  Valley  nf  jhe 
Moon"  is  a  sermon  with  this  text: 

Whenever  a  man  lost  his  stake,  all  he  had  to  do 
was  to  chase  the  frontier  west  a  few  miles  and  get 
another  stake.  They  moved  over  the  face  of  the  land 
like  so  many  locusts.  They  destroyed  everything — 
the  Indians,  the  soil,  the  forests,  just  as  they  had 
destroyed  the  buffalo  and  the  passenger  pigeon.  Their 
morality  in  business  and  politics  was  gambler  moral 
ity — the  loser  chased  the  frontier  for  fresh  stakes. 
The  winner  of  to-day,  broke  to-morrow,  on  the  day 
following  might  be  riding  his  luck  to  royal  flushes  on 
five-card  draws.  So  they  gobbled  and  gambled  from 
the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific. 

In  all  that  he  wrote  was  the  spirit. of  _thi§jiew  empire 
of  the  Padgc;  its  magnificent  distances,  its  reck- 


144  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

lessness  and  exaggeration,  its  adolescent  dreams. 
It  was  the  spirit  of  his  own  biography:  "What 
we  want,"  says  his  heroine  Saxon,  really  his  wife 
Charmian,  "is  a  valley  of  the  moon-,  and  we'll  just 
keep  on  looking  till  we  find  it." 

In  atmospheres  like  this  are  born  the  giants  of  the 
race.     London's   super-~men--are—  pnly 


ayT^lifomiRns  drea™  -of^m^n-  They  came  from 
h^  \Vfstej-n_expansiveness,  his  life  in  camp  and 
forecastle  where  the  masculine  predominated,  and 
from  the  romance  of  the  border  that  creates  from 
the  material  about  it  its  own  mythology.  On  the 
westward-looking  borders  always  iconoclasm,  al 
ways  fierce  individjialisrn^tliat  fr^rtg  sHfzgjjg11™* 
intp__a_religion.  Note  the  philosophy  of  Jacob  Wilse: 

Conventions  are  worthless  for  such  as  we.  They 
are  for  the  swine  who  without  them  would  wallow 
deeper.  The  weak  must  obey  or  be  crushed!  not  so 
with  the  strong.  The  mass  is  nothing;  the  individual 
everything;  and  it  is  the  individual  always  that  rules 
the  mass  and  gives  the  law.  A  fig  for  what  the  world 
says. 

All  of  London's  leading  characters  are  of  this 
type:  super-men,  super-  women,  dreams  of  their 
creator,  half  real,  half  mythical.  All  of  them  are 
blonds  even  to  the  golden  degree.  They  have  blue 
or  gray  eyes  and  bodies  that  are  perfect.  His  men 
have  muscles  that  creep  and  knot  like  living  things, 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier    145 

and  skins  like  silk.  We  think  of  Wolf  Larsen,  of 
Burning  Daylight  who  had  "that  super-strength  that 
is  the  dower  of  but  one  human  in  millions/'  of 
Axel  Gunderson : 

In  the  making  of  Axel  Gunderson  the  gods  had 
remembered  their  old-time  cunning,  and  cast  him  after 
the  manner  of  men  who  were  born  when  the  world 
was  young.  Full  seven  feet,  he  towered  in  his 
picturesque  costume  which  marked  a  kingj)fj±ldorado . 
His  chest,  neck,  and  limbs  were  those  of  a  giant.  To 
bear  his  three  hundred  pounds  of  bone  and  muscle, 
his  snowshoes  were  greater  by  a  generous  yard  than 
those  of  other  men.  Rough-hewn,  with  rugged  brow 
and  massive  jaw  and  unflinching  eyes  of  palest  blue, 
his  face  told  the  tale,  of  one  who  knew  but  the  jaw 
of_might.  Of  the  yellow  of  ripe  corn  silk,  his  frost- 
incrusted  hair  swept  like  day  across  the  night,  and 
fell  far  down  his  coat  of  bearskin. 

tiis  women  ajf  mates,  for  his  men :  super-women 
of  the  border  type,  the  half-mythical  idealizations 
of  a  young  man  whose  life  has  been  passed  largely 
in  masculine  society.  Miss  Caruthers  in  "Under 
the  Deck  Awnings"  could  stay  under  water  two 
minutes,  could  gather  forty-seven  coins  before  com 
ing  up,  and  do  other  physical  feats  as  extraordinary. 
And  besides  this,  "Men  were  as  wax  in  her  hands. 
She  melted  them,  or  subtly  molded  them,  or  in 
cinerated  them,  as  she  pleased.  ...  As  a  man- 


146  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

conqueror  she  was  supreme.  jShe  iwas  a  wjiip- 
lasjh.  a  sting,  a  flame,  an  electric  spark.  At  times 
there  were  flashes  of  will  that  scorched  through 
her  beauty  and  seduction  and  smote  a  victim  into 
blank  and  shivering  idiocy  and  fear."  To  one  who 
objects  to  the  picture,  or  to  other  super-women  like 
Maud  Songster  or  foan  Lackland,  their  creator 
would  say  in  the  words  of  Frona  Wilse,  who 
would  voice  both  herself  and  the  virile  new  land 
of  which  she  was  a  part  :  "You  are  unused  to 
consistent,  natural  women;  because  more  like  you 
are  only  familiar  with  the  hot-house  breeds  —  pretty, 
helpless,  well-rounded,  stall-fatted  little  things,  bliss 
fully  innocent  and  criminally  ignorant.  They  are 
not  natural  or  strong;  nor  can  they  mother  the 
natural  or  strong." 

Everywhere   in   his   work  the  Western. 


vitality  enthusiasm,  expansiveness,  the  abilily  *** 
see_things  and  Hojhings.  in  the  big",  in  the  world  of 
the  impossible  made  possible  by  super-energy  and 
self-reliance.  His  super-men  are  not  all  in  the 
realms  of  savagery  and  frontier  squalor.  -  /^rfc. 
Forest  in  'The  Little  Lady  of  the  Big  Hoiye"  is  a 
business  super-man,  master,  of  a  super-ranch^  in  the 
Valley  of  the  Moon  —  London's  own  ranch  and 
London's  own  self  as  he  dreamed  and  planned  in 
his  study.  The  despatching  of  a  train-load  of 
pedigreed  stallions  and  three  hundred  registered  bulls 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  147 

to  South  America  is  but  one  episode  of  a  single 
day.  Thousands  of  men  are  employed,  each  group 
superintended  by  the  world's  leading  expert  and 
these  experts  instructed  and  directed  by  Forest.  He 
is  supreme  master  of  the  masters  of  every  branch 
of  knowledge  required  upon  the  ranch. 

A  manager,  at  the  end  of  a  five  or  ten  minute  ses 
sion,  often  emerged  sweating,  limp  and  frazzled. 
Yet  for  a  swift  hour,  at  high  tension,  Forest  met  all 
comers,  with  a  master's  grip  handling  them  and  all 
the  multifarious  details  of  their  various  departments. 
He  told  Thompson  the  machinist,  in  four  flashing 
minutes,  where  the  fault  lay  in  the  dynamo  of  the 
Big  House  refrigerator. 

And  in  the  same  way  he  went  down  the  whole  line 
of  his  super-specialists.  Is  it  enough?  He  does 
this  by  working  one  hour  a  day.  The  rest  of  the  day 
he  spends  as  a  bronco-buster,  marksman,  swimmer, 
defeater  of  the  champion  diver  of  the  whole  South 
Seas,  composer  of  music  and  poetry,  and  quoter 
of  Browning  and  Bergson. 

Youth  is  the  J^e^jte-it-all.  In  the  glorious  youth 
of  mWftttfe  region  he  was  an  adolescent,  driven, 
as  he  has  said  of  one  of  his  own  heroes,  by  ''the 
urge  of  life  healthy  and  strong,  unaware  of  frailty 
and  decay,  drunk  with  sublime  complacence,  ego- 
mad,  enchanted  by  his  own  mighty  optimism." 
When  he  died  at  forty  he  was  still,  like  his  Cali- 


148  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

fornia,  in  the  flower  of  his  adolescence,  still  dream 
ing  over  the  vision  that  had  glorified  his  squalid 
boyhood:  "It  was  only  a  little  lad,  but  he  had 
dreams  of  becoming  a  great  musician  and  having 
all  Europe  at  his  feet."  It  put  the  thrill  of  romance 
into  all  that  he  wrote,  a  thrill  like  that  in  the  climax 
of  "The  Call  of  the  Wild" : 

When  the  long  winter  nights  come  on  and  the  wolves 
follow  their  meat  into  the  lower  valleys,  he  may  be 
seen  running  at  the  head  of  the  pack  through  the 
pale  moonlight  or  glimmering  borealis,  leaping  gigantic 
above  his  fellows,  his  great  throat  a-bellow  as  he  sings 
a  song  of  the  younger  world,  which  is  the  song  of  the 
pack. 

It  is  the  Saul  of  Western  individualism,  the^pirif 
of  thegroung,  f  i££_JiVesL_aL  our  America. 

That  London  should  have  been  a  socialist  was 
inevitable :  iconoclasm  and  rgyek  were  in_tb^-^air 
h^breathed,  as  also  that  extreme  individualism  that 
chafed  under  authority  from  any  source  whatever. 
The  point  of  view  in  his  sea  stories  is  that  of  the 
forecastle  to  which  authority  is  synonymous  with 
tyranny;  in  "The  Road"  it  is  that  of  the  hobo  to 
whom  all  organized  society  is  tyrannical,  and  in 
"The  Iron  Heel"  it  is  that  of  the  modern  bolshevist 
who  would  destroy  everything  in  authority  and  be 
gin  anew.  "The  Iron  Heel"  is  the  "Newi  from 
Nowhere,"  just  as  "Martin  Eden"  is  the  "Alton 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  149 

Locke"  of  later  socialistic  literature,  with  this  dif 
ference,  however :  Morris  could  bring  his  reader 
into  the  sunshine  beyond  the  revolution,  but  London 
could  offer  only  failure  and  suicide.  The  very 
violence  of  his  emotions  and  the  radicalness  of  his 
remedies  left  him  powerless  to  close  otherwise. 
His  own  life  and  his  later  novels  offer  his  only 
solution  that  is  not  merely  destructive:  flee  away 
from  the  cities  and  the  gathering-places  of  men,  he 
says,  and  in  a  Valley  of  the  Moon  create  an  empire 
of  your  own  over  which  you  can  rule  supreme. 

All  this  reveals  to  us  much.  To  read  Jack  Lon 
don  is  to  understand,  perhaps  for  the  first  time,  the 
soul  of  the  great  Northwestern  empire  on  the  Pa 
cific,  that  bred  the  I.  W.  W.,  that  has  turned  the 
tide  of  Presidential  elections,  that  single-handed  em-* 
broils  the  nation  with  Japan,  and  that  ever  must: 
be  reckoned  with  in  all  national  councils;  and  also 
it  is  to  feel  in  vivid  reality  the  power  and  the 
vitality  of  that  Western  tide  that  is  bound  to  over 
flow  to  the  enrichment  of  all  areas  of  our  American; 
life. 

VI 

But  not  only  was  London  the  embodiment  of 
the  spirit  of  a  vibrant  locality,  he  was  during  a 
brief  period  a  voice  that  was  national  and  inter 
national.  The  war  has  thrown  the  nineteenth  cen- 


150  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

tury  into  new  perspective.  The  years  before  1914 
already  seem  to  belong  to  a  bygone  era.  No  one 
smiles  now  when  we  speak  of  "the  remarkable 
Tightness  of  RUdyard  Kipling,"  or  even  when 
we  pronounce  Jack  London  the  most  widely  repre- 
sensative  American  literary  figure,  the  more  arrest 
ing  literary  voice  during  the  decade  preceding  the 
war. 

London  was  swept  into  notice  upon  the  crest  of 
the  Kipling  wave,  that  protest  of  the  nineties 
against  Tennysonian  sentiment,  Preraphaelitism, 
Oscar  Wildeism,  Aubrey  Beardsleyism.  In  1903, 
while  he  was  still  fighting  for  recognition,  London 
reviewed  Kipling  who  was  then  under  his  first  eclipse, 
taking  as  his  text  the  pronouncement  of  a  Chicago 
reviewer  that  Rudyard  Kipling,  "prophet  of  blood 
and  vulgarity,  prince  of  the  ephemerals,  and  idol 
of  the  non-elect,"  was  dead.  London  hailed  him  as 
the  most  living  writer  of  the  nineteenth  century: 
"When  the  future  centuries  quest  back  to  the  nine 
teenth  century  to  find  what  manner  of  century 
it  was,  to  find  not  what  the  people  of  the  nineteenth 
century  thought  they  thought,  but  what  they  really 
thought;  not  what  they  thought  they  ought  to  do, 
but  what  they  really  did  do,  then  a  certain  man, 
Kipling,  will  be  read  and  read  with  understanding." 

It  was  inevitable  that  he  should  have  tr.ken  his 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier    151 

own  stand  with  prophets  of  blood  and  vulgarity : 
his  birth  and  his  training  had  fitted  him  for  nothing 
else.  Moreover,  it  was  his  good  fortune  that  the 
time  was  ripe  for  such  prophets.  Roosevelt,  ranch 
man  of  the  Northwest,  wilderness  hunter,  rough- 
rider,  apostle  of  the  free  air  and  the  out  of  doors, 
was  in  the  fierce  light  of  the  Presidency.  A  genera 
tion  of  young  men  excited  by  the  call  of  war  and 
then  thwarted  of  their  desire  by  the  quick  collapse 
of  the  foe  was  on  the  scene.  To  gratify  their 
heroic  desire  they  turned  perforce  to  swash-buck 
ling  romance — thin  food  and  soon  intolerable.  A 
reaction  such  as  Kipling  headed  in  the  eighties  was 
inevitable.  From  the  White  House  flew  Jack- 
London-like  phrases :  "mollycoddle,"  "race  suicide," 
"the  strenuous  life,"  "red-blooded  men."  The 
"muck-rake"  and  "Ananias  Club"  schools  of  criti 
cism  arose  and  flourished;  the  out-of-doors  move 
ment  changed  overnight  from  a  fad  to  a  religion; 
Seton's  "Wild  Animals  I  Have  Known"  started 
a  whole  group  of  writers.  Frederick  Remington 
published  "Men  with  the  Bark  On";  the  title  is 
redolent  of  the  times.  It  was  the  period  of  Stephen 
Crane  and  "The  Red  Badge  of  Courage/'  of  Frank 
Norris  and  "The  Pit,"  of  Elbert  Hubbard  and  the 
"Message  to  Garcia,"  of  Davis  and  "Soldiers  of 
Fortune,"  of  Sinclair's  "The  Jungle,"  and — like  a 


152  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

sudden  jazz  note — the  short  stories  of  O.  Henry: 
surely  no  period  in  our  literary  history  was  ever 
more  various  or  more  sensational.  (  *  O^L;. 

And  it  was  into  this  excited  group  of  young 
men  of  the  nineties  of  the  dying  Victorian  period, 
who  had  come  down  upon  th'ef  literary  metropolis 
like  the  wild  university  group  upon  London  in  the 
nineties  of  the  Elizabethan  age,  that  Jack  London 
projected  himself,  and,  at  the  one  moment  in  our 
history  when  it  would  have  been  possible,  he  seized 
the  baton  and  led  the  orchestra.  And  it  was  a 
leadership  no  man  may  call  conventional.  A  con 
temporary  English  critic  characterized  him  as  a 
literary  runner  amuck. 

It  was  as  if  he  foresaw  the  reign  of  savagery  that 
was  to  come  with  the  German  uprising.  His  cry 
was:  Face  the  truth.  Why  refuse  to  see  what 
is  straight  before  your  eyes?  Soft-living  peoples 
have  always  been  awakened  by  blond  beasts  of  the 
North.  Civilization  is  not  to  be  depended  upon; 
it  is  but  a  veneer  that  hides  the  abysmal  brute. 
Pathurst,  the  esthetic  club  man,  gone  to  sea  because 
of  ennui,  becomes  a  man  of  the  viking  age  when  he 
awakes  one  day  to  find  himself  in  command  of  a 
mutiny-stricken  ship.  Instantly  he  becomes  blood 
and  iron,  knocks  men  right  and  left,  shoots  mutineers 
in  cold  blood,  rules  with  brutality  a  crew  that  is 
"the  sweepings  of  hell,"  and  single-handed  brings 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  153 

his  ship  to  port.  And  the  motif  of  the  book  is 
this :  Pathnrst  is  you.  The  blond  beast  of  Niet 
zsche  lies  only  skin-deep  within  you  and  needs  but 
circumstances  to  set  it  free.  Like  Smoke  Bellew, 
the  veriest  mollycoddle  has  it  in  him  to  be  in 
the  right  environment  a  sea-wolf  and  a  trampler 
upon  all  save  the  strong. 

From  the  first  London  had  to  fight  against  the 
contention  that  his  pictures  were  too  strong  and 
brutal.  Eight  years  before  the  rape  of  Belgium 
he  wrote  in  anger  his  essay  "The  Somnambulists.'1 
What  is  the  matter  with  the  world?  he  cried.  It 
is  asleep. 

Civilization  has  spread  a  veneer  over  the  surface 
of  the  soft-shelled  animal  known  as  man.  It  is  a 
very  thin  veneer;  but  so  wonderfully  is  man  con 
stituted  that  he  squirms  on  his  bit  of  achievement  and 
believes  he  is  garbed  in  armor-plate.  .  .  .  Yet  man  to 
day  is  the  same  man  that  drank  from  his  enemy's 
skull  in  the  dark  German  forests,  that  sacked  cities, 
and  stole  his  women  from  neighboring  clans  like  any 
howling  aborigine.  The  flesh-and-blood  body  of  man 
has  not  changed  in  the  last  several  thousand  years. 
Nor  has  his  mind  changed.  .  .  .  Starve  him,  let  him 
miss  six  meals,  and  see  gape  through  the  veneer  the 
hungry  maw  of  the  animal  beneath.  Get  between  him 
and  the  female  of  his  kind  upon  whom  his  mating 
instinct  is  bent,  and  see  his  eyes  blaze  like  any  angry 
cat's,  hear  in  his  throat  the  scream  of  wild  stallions, 


154  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

and  watch  his  fists  clench  like  an  orang-outang's. 
Maybe  he  will  even  beat  his  chest.  Touch  his  silly 
vanity,  which  he  exalts  into  high-sounding  pride,  call 
him  a  liar,  and  behold  the  red  animal  in  him  that  makes 
a  hand  clutching  that  is  quick  like  the  tensing  of  a 
tiger's  claw,  or  an  eagle's  talon,  incarnate  with  desire 
to  rip  and  tear. 

The  same  rule  applied  to  nations: 

The  Anglo-Saxon  is  a  pirate,  a  land  robber  and  a 
sea  robber.  Underneath  his  thin  coating  of  culture, 
he  is  what  he  was  in  Morgan's  time,  in  Drake's  time, 
in  William's  time,  in  Alfred's  time.  The  blood  and 
the  tradition  of  Hengist  and  Horsa  are  in  his  veins. 
In  battle  he  is  subject  to  the  blood  lusts  of  the  Ber 
serkers  of  old.  Plunder  and  booty  fascinate  him 
immeasurably. 

And  so  on  and  on.  We  called  him  brutal  when  he 
wrote  this  in  the  serene  days  before  the  war;  we 
called  him  gruesome  disciple  of  Gogol,  parader  of 
horrors  that  civilization  had  outgrown.  We  are 
not  so  sure  now.  And  his  point  of  view  was  the 
German  point  of  view.  Over  and  over  again  in  all 
his  volumes  he  proclaimed  shrilly  his  soap-box 
doctrine  that  the  world  belongs  to  the  strong. 
Martin  Eden  proclaims  it  in  every  chapter. 

Nietzsche  was  right.  jThe  world  belongs  to  the 
strong — to  the  strong  who  are  noble  as  well  and  who 
do  not  wallow  in  the  swine-trough  of  trade  and 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  1, 

exchange.  The  world  belongs  to  the  true  noblemen, 
to  the  great  blond  beasts,  to  the  non-compromisers, 
to  the  "yes-sayers."  And  they  will  eat  you  up,  you 
socialists  who  are  afraid  of  socialism  and  who  think 
yourselves  individualists.  Your  slave  morality  of  the 
weak  and  lowly  will  never  save  you. 

And  again: 

In  the  struggle  for  existence  the  strong  and  the 
progeny  of  the  strong  tend  to  survive,  while  the  weak 
and  the  progeny  of  the  weak  are  crushed  and  tend  to 
perish.  The  result  is  that  the  strong  and  the  progeny 
of  the  strong  survive,  and,  so  long  as  the  struggle 
obtains,  the  strength  of  each  generation  increases. 
That  is  development.  But  you  slaves  dream  of  a 
society  where  the  law  of  development  will  be  annulled, 
where  no  weaklings  and  inefficients  will  perish,  where 
every  inefficient  will  have  as  much  as  he  wants  to  eat 
as  many  times  a  day  as  he  desires,  and  where  all  will 
marry  and  have  progeny — the  weak  as  well  as  the 
strong.  .  .  . 

Your  society  of  slaves — of,  by,  and  for  slaves — must 
inevitably  weaken  and  go  to  pieces  as  the  life  which 
composes  it  weakens  and  goes  to  pieces.  I  am 
enunciating  biology  and  not  sentimental  ethics.  .  .  . 

To  Jacob  Wilse — 

Battle  was  the  law  and  the  way  of  progress.  The 
world  was  made  for  the  strong  and  only  the  strong 
inherited  it  and  through  it  all  there  ran  an  equity.  To 


156  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

be  honest  was  to  be  strong.  To  sin  was  to  weaken. 
To  bluff  an  honest  man  was  to  be  dishonest.  To  bluff 
a  bluffer  was  to  smite  with  the  steel  of  justice.  The 
primitive  strength  was  in  the  arm ;  the  modern  strength 
in  the  brain.  Though  it  had  shifted  ground,  the 
struggle  was  the  same  old  struggle^ 

And  all  this  in  the  days  long  before  the  war  in 
books  eagerly  republished  in  Sweden  and  Germany 
and  Russia. 

London  out-Kiplinged  Kipling  for  the  reason  that 
he  knew  more  than  Kipling.  The  author  of  the 
"Plain  Tales"  is  as  brutal  and  bloody  and  vulgar 
as  the  life  that  he  saw  and  described,  but  London 
saw  depths  of  brutality  that  Kipling  was  ignorant 
of.  Like  Martin  Eden,  "he  had  sighted  the  whole 
sea  of  life's  Hastiness  that  he  had  known  and  voy 
aged  over  and  through.  .  .  ."  When  Kipling  would 
write  "Captains  Courageous/'  he  went  to  Gloucester 
and  studied  the  fishing  fleet  and  interviewed  the  sail 
ors  ;  but  when  London  wrote  of  the  sea  he  drew  his 
material  from  his  own  blood  and  sweat  in  the 
forecastle  of  a  grimy  seal-oil-soaked  schooner 
in  Arctic  waters.  He  had  himself  known  the 
lowest  depths  to  which  drunkenness  and  va 
grancy  bring  men.  He  had  seen  the  naked  brute, 
he  had  seen  what  men  become  when  the  re 
straints  of  civilization  are  relaxed,  and  he 
told  his  generation,  in  words  as  strong  as  his  genera- 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  157 

tion  would  bear,  the  naked  truth.  And  to  the  last 
he  complained  that  he  was  not  allowed  to  tell  the 
whole  truth.  Even  when  he  was  at  the  height 
of  his  fame  he  had  stories  rejected  by  magazines 
because  the  editors  considered  them  too  brutal  for 
their  readers  to  bear.  We  can  imagine  his  sardonic 
chuckle  when  the  "abysmal  brute"  broke  loose  in 
Belgium  and  his  squeamish  countrymen  shuddered  in 
such  ghastly  horror.  For  ten  years  he  had  been 
telling  them  of  the  blond  beast.  More  even  than 
Kipling  was  he  the  "prophet  of  blood  and  vulgarity" 
in  the  smug  epoch  before  the  outburst  of  the  war. 


VII 

The  popularity  of  London  in  Europe  during  his 
decade  cannot  be  overlooked.  In  Sweden  transla 
tions  of  twenty- four  of  his  books  were  sold  to  the 
number  of  230,000  in  nine  years.  Many  editions 
were  taken  by  Russia,  especially  of  his  later  social 
istic  books.  When  he  died  in  1916  more  space  was 
devoted  to  him  in  the  European  papers  than  to 
the  Emperor  Francis  Joseph,  who  died  at  the  same 
time.  His  socialism  undoubtedly  was  taken  more 
seriously  in  eastern  Europe  than  at  home.  We 
tolerated  his  pictures  of  the  burning  and  rape  of 
Chicago  in  'The  Iron  Heel"  and  of  the  blotting  out 
of  American  civilization  in  "The  Scarlet  Plague" 


158  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

as  graphic  bits  of  fiction,  but  bolshevist  Europe  ac 
cepted  them  as  solemn  prophecy  and  as  all  but  ac 
complished  fact.  For  London,  when  he  defined  his 
position  and  his  program,  spoke  with  no  uncertain 
voice.  To  him  socialism  meant  war  to  the  limit : 
"It  is  its  purpose  to  wipe  out,  root  and  branch,  all 
capitalistic  institutions  of  present-day  society."  And 
only  shortly  before  his  death  he  resigned  from  the 
Socialistic  party  in  disgust  "because  of  its  lack  of 
fire  and  fight,  and  its  loss  of  emphasis  on  the  class 
struggle." 

Richard  Henry  Little,  who  was  with  the  Russians 
during  the  period  after  the  fall  of  Germany  when 
the  Red  army  was  coming  into  power,  has  given 
a  glimpse  of  the  influence  of  Jack  London  upon 
the  Russian  people : 

I  was  n't  left  long  in  doubt  as  to  who  the  Russians 
considered  the  greatest  living  American.  It  was 
"Yakclunnen."  For  the  life  of  me  I  could  n't  figure 
out  for  a  while  just  who  Yakclunnen  was,  although 
I  eagerly  agreed  that  he  was  the  greatest  American 
of  them  all.  Then  they  brought  out  a  great  many 
treasured  and  tattered  volumes,  and  I  realized  they 
were  talking  of  Jack  London. 

Never  was  an  author  so  idolized  as  Jack  London 
is  among  the  Russians.  Apparently  all  of  his  works 
have  been  translated  into  Russian,  and  I  found  them 
everywhere.  Officers  passed  them  around  from  one 


The  Prophet  of  the  Last  Frontier  159 

to  another,  and  often  I  have  seen  little  groups  of 
soldiers  sitting  in  the  woods,  while  the  man  who  could 
read  was  doing  so  aloud  to  the  eager  delight  of  the 
awestruck  group  around  him.  At  every  mess  the 
officers  wanted  me  to  tell  them  all  I  knew  about  Jack 
London. 

I  wanted  to  talk  about  Lenin  and  Trotzky,  but  they 
wanted  to  talk  about  "Yakclunnen." 

To  what  extent  his  voice  is  still  directing  the  great 
soviet  uprising  we  may  not  say. 

We  do  know,  however,  that  he  can  be  but  a  tem 
porary  disturbance.  His  philosophy  was  material 
istic,  based  upon  the  Nietzschean  omnipotence  of 
force,  and  the  World  War,  if  nothing  else,  has 
shown  its  fallacy.  Beyond  "The  Sea  Wolf"  ma 
terialism  cannot  go,  and  that  "Martin  Eden,"  which 
purports  to  trace  the  evolution  of  a  life  under  the 
workings  of  this  philosophy,  could  be  ended  only  by 
suicide,  reveals  its  fatal  weakness.  The  thunder 
and  the  earthquake  were  all  this  Calif ornian  Niet 
zsche  could  understand :  of  the  philosophy  of  the 
still  small  voice  he  knew  nothing  at  all.  He  could 
run  away  from  the  problem  and  fancy  he  had  found 
a  solution  in  his  unsocialistic  Valley  of  the  Moon 
experiment,  but  of  the  meaning  of  life  expressed 
in  terms  of  sacrifice  he  was  as  ignorant  as  his 
Alaskan  savages. 

Undoubtedly  he  will  be  rated  as  a  picturesque  in- 


160  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

cident  in  the  decade  that  closed  an  era.  .  His  social 
philosophy  and  his  pseudo-science  will  disappear 
early.  If  anything  of  his  writings  is  to  survive  its 
day,  it  will  be  a  few  fragments  from  his  novels, 
a  dozen  or  two  of  his  short  stories  that  are  wholly 
American  in  scene  and  spirit,  and  "The  Call  of  the 
Wild,"  which  has  in  it  not  only  the  freshness  and 
the  realism  of  the  living  North,  but  the  atmosphere 
and  the  thrill  of  romance,  which  is  the  eternal  spirit 
of  youth. 


THE  EPIC  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

A    TERCENTENARY    REVERIE 

SOME  day  the  history  of  New  England  will  be 
written  as  an  epic. 

I  hesitate  to  confess  it,  for  I  am  New  England 
born,  but  the  Mayflower  and  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 
and  Plymouth  Rock  do  not  move  me  as  once  they 
did.  Niagara  stuns  and  terrifies  one  at  first,  but  at 
length  it  lulls  one  to  sleep.  It  is  time  perhaps 
to  change  the  subject,  and  yet  there  is  one  thing 
about  the  episode  that  holds  me  against  my  will: 
there  once  lived  men  so  fearfully  in  earnest  that 
they  could  take  their  wives  and  children  straight  off 
the  map  into  the  blank  vault  of  the  west  and  with 
out  a  thought  of  ever  returning.  They  sought 
no  port,  no  definite  land :  they  sailed  simply  into  the 
west  and  the  first  landfall  they  made  was  to  be  their 
home.  They  headed  only  for  America  three  thous- 
sand  miles  away. 

And  here  I  pause.  When  you  aim  at  random 
at  America  you  have  a  wide  mark.  After  weeks 
and  weeks  of  zigzagging  and  uncertainty,  headed 
this  way  and  that  by  contrary  winds,  swept  leagues 

161 


162  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

to  the  south  or  the  north  by  fierce  tempests,  blown 
out  of  all  reckoning  for  days,  at  the  mercy  of  a 
sailing-master  eager  only  to  land  his  cargo  at  the 
earliest  possible  moment,  he  cared  not  where,  why  of 
all  points  should  New  England  have  been  the  land 
fall?  Why  not  Newfoundland?  Why  not  Flor 
ida?  Any  one  of  a  thousand  chances  would  have 
veered  them  away  from  the  New  England  coast. 
We  say  to-day  that  sheer  chance  flung  them  there. 
The  Pilgrim  said  k  was  the  hand  of  God  on  the 
tiller. 

But  whether  it  were  chance  or  Providence,  one 
thing  is  certain :  that  landfall  decreed  the  settlement 
of  a  region  as  inhuman  as  any  that  ever  engaged 
the  powers  of  man.  Had  those  Pilgrims  possessed 
an  accurate  chart  and  had  they  known  what  we 
know  in  these  later  times,  that  landing  never  would 
have  been.  Indeed,  had  the  seventeenth  century 
known  the  real  facts  about  the  Atlantic  coast  and 
the  territory  inland,  whole  great  areas  of  New 
England  would  have  remained  unsettled  to  this  day. 
Where  else  in  the  world,  save  in  Scotland,  perhaps, 
or  Switzerland,  can  one  find  under  cultivation  an 
area  to  match  it?  Mazes  of  boulders  and  glacial 
drift  tilled  with  all  seriousness  as  farms;  dizzy 
hillsides  jagged  thick  with  rocks  turned  into  corn 
fields;  veritable  sloughs  bottomed  with  polypod  and 
sweet-flag  made  into  meadows;  vast  stretches  of 


The  Epic  of  New  England         163 

granite  ledges  snarled  with  hardback  turned  into 
pastures;  wrenched  from  nature  with  incredible 
toil,  fenced  with  heavy  stone  walls  that  called  for 
the  labor  of  Titans;  winters  Arctic  cold  with  snow 
often  for  six  months;  roads  eternally  up  and  down 
at  sharp  angles,  buried  under  great  drifts  in  winter 
and  washed  into  ragged  trenches  by  the  cloudbursts 
of  summer — where  else  will  one  find  a  farming 
region  like  that? 

The  old  Puritan  hive,  those  earliest-settled  towns 
near  the  mouths  of  the  larger  rivers  and  along  the 
sea,  sent  out  its  first  swarm  during  the  mid-years 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  was  that  sturdy  brood 
that  fought  the  Seven  Years'  War  and  the  Revolu 
tion;  a  restless,  free-born  race,  full-lunged  and 
mighty-limbed,  that  crashed  into  the  northern 
woods  far  up  into  Maine,  New  Hampshire,  and 
Vermont,  founded  towns  by  every  water-power, 
surveyed  the  land  into  lots,  and  carved  out  the  first 
farms  along  the  flats  and  river-courses.  For  forty 
years  the  wilderness  rang  with  their  axes,  the  crash 
of  their  old-growth  pines,  their  mighty  bonfires, 
and  their  shouts  to  their  toiling  oxen.  Clearings 
became  farms;  trails  were  plowed  into  roads;  wild 
mountain  torrents  were  turned  upon  saws  and  mill 
stones.  That  was  the  first  generation  of  the  New 
England  hill  lands;  demigods  who  did  each  the 
work  of  five ;  who  toiled  every  moment  of  the  day- 


164  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

light  and  far  beyond,  a  generation  that  wrestled 
barehanded  with  brute  nature  in  her  strongest  fast 
nesses  and  won.  And  the  women  did  no  less  than 
the  men.  They  it  was  who  under  sternest  condi 
tions  and  amid  elemental  surroundings  bore  and 
reared  those  families  of  twelve  and  fifteen  children, 
washed  and  baked  and  mended,  prepared  the  great 
meals,  spun  the  yarn,  wove  the  cloth,  made  the  gar 
ments,  did  the  thousand  little  chores  which  a  farm 
and  a  household  demand,  and  died  at  last  worn  out, 
their  work  all  undone  lying  in  heaps  about  them. 

The  great  families  swiftly  outgrew  the  home 
farm  and  scattered  into  the  hills  and  the  farther 
valleys  to  clear  other  land.  This  second  generation 
completed  the  organization  of  the  hill  towns,  pulled 
out  the  last  stumps  in  the  earlier  meadows,  built 
the  great  farmhouses  with  enormous  chimneys  and 
wainscoting  of  clear  pine  boards  four  feet  in  width, 
and  completed  the  early  highways,  running  them 
without  thought  of  compromise  straight  over  the 
steepest  hills,  oblivious  of  the  fact,  not  discovered 
until  a  century  later,  that  "the  kettle  bail  is  no  longer 
when  it  lies  down  than  when  it  stands  erect." 
They  multiplied  the  settled  land  by  ten  and  they 
made  of  the  northern  hills  a  neighborhood  with 
growing  villages  and  fast  improving  farms. 

The  third  generation,  which  came  upon  the  scene 
in  the  early  years  of  the  new  century,  completed 


The  Epic  of  New  England         165 

the  expansion.  When  they  had  done  their  work, 
every  acre  of  land  that  could  by  human  effort  be 
wrung  from  nature  had  been  taken.  All  the  steep 
hillsides  were  dotted  now  with  farmhouses. 
Everywhere  were  little  neighborhoods :  far  in  the 
mountain  fastnesses,  deep  in  the  back  valleys,  high 
on  the  wild  north  slopes  where  the  winter  sun 
scarcely  ever  shone  after  mid-afternoon,  or  clustered 
like  Swiss  villages  about  the  very  bases  of  the  bare 
peaks  sometimes  ten  and  fifteen  miles  from  post- 
office  and  store.  It  was  this  generation  that 
completed  the  stone  walls,  running  them  for  miles 
over  hills  and  through  forest,  surrounding  every 
field  with  a  barricade  like  the  outworks  of  a  fortress, 
and  heaping  up  rock  heaps  that  to-day  stand  like 
the  pyramids,  imperishable  monuments  to  a  race 
forever  gone. 

Again  great  families  of  twelve  and  even  eighteen 
children,  that  marvelous  fourth  generation  about 
which  our  epic  centers.  Born  in  the  thirties  and 
forties,  they  saw  New  England  in  its  prime.  Dur 
ing  their  childhood  the  hills  swarmed  with  life. 
Nowhere  was  place  so  remote  that  one  might  not  find 
there  a  neighborhood  with  fifty  and  even  seventy 
pupils  in  its  red  schoolhouse.  Sprung  from  gen 
erations  of  hill-born  men,  toilers  in  the  open  air, 
feeders  upon  the  wholesome  fruits  of  the  soil,  lovers 
of  the  woods  and  the  hills  over  which  they  scurried 


166  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

like  the  red  foxes,  reared  in  the  great  farmhouses 
where  sleeping  rooms  were  unheated  and  abun 
dantly  ventilated,  this  generation  was  as  sturdy  a 
race  as  the  earth  ever  produced.  They  were  as  free 
as  the  hill  winds  they  breathed;  they  looked  one 
straight  in  the  eye ;  they  depended  solely  upon  their 
own  brain  and  muscle  and  will;  they  were  self- 
confident  and  undismayed  by  difficulties ;  they  could 
adapt  themselves  to  circumstances  and  improvise 
new  methods;  and  they  had  in  them  a  love  of  work 
that  had  been  ground  into  their  very  bones. 

Those  were  the  days  when  the  little  back  towns 
which  to-day  number  scarce  two  hundred  souls 
numbered  twelve  and  fifteen  hundred,  and  sent 
often  two  representatives  each  to  the  General  Court 
of  the  State.  Then  it  was  that  a  town-meeting  day 
at  the  Center  was  the  event  of  the  year.  The 
whole  town  was  there;  hoary  old  grandsires  of  the 
second  generation  bent  and  feeble  who  chattered  of 
the  strength  of  their  youth  and  told  tales  of  their 
childhood  in  the  forests,  the  third  generation  in  its 
prime  talking  of  cattle  and  corn  and  the  coming 
spring's  work,  and  lastly,  flocking  by  itself,  the  cen 
ter  of  it  all,  the  young  men  under  twenty-one,  a  hun 
dred  of  them  with  massive  shoulders  and  mighty 
limbs,  clad  in  coarse  and  strong  garments,  and  with 
heavy  cowhide  boots  with  tops  that  reached  almost 
to  the  knees.  What  a  magazine  of  stored-up  en- 


The  Epic  of  New  England         167 

ergy!  They  are  not  still  a  moment;  crowding  and 
pushing  each  other,  boasting,  fighting,  wrestling, 
laughing  boisterously  at  rough  jokes,  jumping,  lift 
ing  each  other  by  the  'heels  with  main  strength, 
massing  together  to  crash  down  the  inner  partition 
of  the  town  hall;  a  "rough  lot,"  a  band  of  young 
Titans,  with  energy  enough  and  self-confidence 
enough  to  shake  the  very  foundations  of  the  re 
public.  What  outlet  was  there  to  be  for  all  this 
pent-up  power? 

It  was  time  for  New  England  to  swarm  again; 
the  hive  was  full  to  bursting.  Had  there  been  no 
vent  beyond  the  home  domain  it  is  hard  to  imagine 
what  might  have  been.  Land  already  was  being 
worked  against  the  very  protest  of  nature,  and  this 
new  brood  would  have  had  to  turn  the  ledges  and 
the  very  pastures  into  farms  and  expend  itself  in 
making  into  a  garden  what  nature  had  intended  for 
a  golf-links  and  a  quarry. 

The  first  overflow  consisted  of  the  older  girls 
who  found  work  in  the  cotton  mills  of  Lowell  and 
Fall  River,  and  of  the  older  boys  who  found 
employment  in  the  machine  shops  and  in  the  grow 
ing  city  of  Boston.  But  this  was  a  mere  nothing. 
The  pressure  in  the  northern  districts  was  increas 
ing.  Something  must  happen,  and  suddenly  the 
something  came. 

The  great  West  opened  all  in  a  moment  as  if  the 


168  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

curtain  had  arisen  for  the  first  act.  Gold  had  been 
found  on  the  far  Pacific,  fabulous  masses  of  gold 
to  be  had  for  the  mere  gathering — in  California,  a 
region  as  vague  and  as  far  away  as  the  valley  of 
diamonds  which  Sindbad  entered.  How  it  thrilled 
the  northern  farms!  Then  had  come  the  Kansas- 
Nebraska  call  that  sounded  over  New  England  like 
a  trumpet  blast;  for  every  settler  sixty  acres  of 
flat  land  and  a  yoke  of  oxen  free.  Iowa,  Minne 
sota,  Wisconsin,  Illinois;  men  talked  of  nothing 
else.  Whole  families  started  westward ;  young  boys 
stole  from  their  homes  at  dead  of  night  and  worked 
their  way  toward  the  Mississippi,  their  imaginations 
set  on  fire  by  the  tales  they  had  heard. 

Then  suddenly,  like  a  fire  alarm  at  night,  rang 
out  the  call  to  war.  Seventy  thousand,  five  hun 
dred  thousand,  two  million  men  must  come  from  the 
North,  and  there  must  be  a  thousand  leaders  raised 
instantly,  leaders  of  the  first  rank,  for  this  was  to 
be  a  war  such  as  the  world  never  before  had  seen. 
Never  has  there  been  such  a  call  for  men,  men  for 
the  armies  of  the  North,  men  to  break  the  vast 
West,  men  to  develop  the  iron  and  the  oil  and  the 
coal,  men  to  bridge  rivers  and  streams  and  to 
tunnel  mountains  and  build  cities.  And  they  were 
to  be  picked  and  perfect  men,  of  heroic  mold,  iron- 
limbed  and  self-reliant,  men  that  nothing  could 
quench  and  nothing  dominate,  who  could  grapple 


The  Epic  of  New  England         169 

with  a  whole  continent  and  wrestle  with  problems 
as  wide  as  the  world  itself.  And  it  was  not  a  mere 
dozen  or  a  score  that  was  wanted ;  it  was  thousands 
and  tens  of  thousands.  And  they  must  be  had  in 
stantly.  There  was  no  time  to  train  this  army,  to 
discipline  and  college  it  for  the  new  work.  It 
must  be  picked  from  material  already  at  hand.  And 
to  the  glory  of  the  New  World,  all  was  ready.  In 
1838  Emerson  had  written :  "This  country  has  not 
fulfilled  what  seemed  the  reasonable  expectation 
of  mankind.  Men  looked,  when  all  feudal  straps 
and  bandages  were  snapped  asunder,  that  Nature, 
too  long  the  mother  of  dwarfs,  should  reimburse 
itself  by  a  brood  of  Titans  who  should  laugh  and 
leap  in  the  continent,  and  run  up  the  mountains  of 
the  West  with  the  errand  of  genius  and  love."  And 
even  as  he  wrote,  the  race  of  Titans  which  he  de 
scribed  was  in  its  cradles  all  about  him,  and  now 
they  are  ready.  In  twenty  years  New  England  sent 
forth  a  brood  that  not  even  America  will  ever  equal 
again.  Emerson  himself  in  later  years  could  say, 
"We  shall  not  again  disparage  America,  now  we 
have  seen  what  men  it  will  bear." 

It  was  this  fourth  generation  that  carried  through 
the  great  Civil  War,  that  conquered  the  vast  West 
of  America  and  turned  it  in  a  single  lifetime  from  a 
raw  wilderness  stretching  over  a  quarter  of  the 
earth's  girdle  into  a  garden  and  an  empire.  To 


170  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

these  marvelous  men  nothing  was  impossible.  They 
spanned  the  vast  distances  with  railroads,  penetrated 
the  Rockies  and  the  Sierra  Nevadas  as  if  they  had 
been  molehills,  crushed  the  Plains  Indians,  exter 
minated  the  great  buffalo  herds,  opened  up  all  the 
rivers,  built  Chicago  and  the  cities  of  the  Plain,  or 
ganized  the  iron  works  of  Pittsburg,  uncovered  the 
coal  and  the  oil  and  sent  them  broadcast  over  the 
earth,  and  in  their  old  age  left  the  West  they  had 
found  in  their  boyhood  a  dream  that  to  their  grand 
sons  seemed  as  wild  and  romantic  and  as  far  away  as 
the  tales  of  the  "Arabian  Nights." 

But  alas  for  the  old  hive.  A  visit  to  New  Eng 
land  to-day  is  a  sad  pilgrimage  to  one  who  knows 
aught  of  the  early  years.  There  hangs  over  it 
forever  an  atmosphere  of  melancholy  and  tender 
regret.  The  very  winds  and  the  waters  seem  to 
murmur,  "They  are  gone."  iJThe  Civil  War  de 
stroyed  for  the  South  the  old  plantation  life  and 
the  only  aristocracy  in  the  European  sense  of  the 
word  that  America  has  ever  known,  and  it  left 
behind  it  that  vague  sadness  and  longing  that  are 
the  soul  of  romance;  but  the  war  destroyed  just  as 
surely  the  old  regime  in  New  England,  the  old 
patriarchal  life,  the  sense  of  family  and  of  home 
that  comes  only  in  perfectly  organized  neighbor 
hoods  untouched  by  the  world,  and  it  left  behind 
it  the  same  "before  the  war"  atmosphere  of  a 


The  Epic  of  New  England         171 

golden  age  forever  gone.  For  North  and  South 
alike  the  war  ended  an  era,  and  behind  it  lies  the 
only  romance  this  garish  republican  land  of  ours 
has  ever  known. 

In  New  England  it  vanished  almost  literally  in  a 
night.  It  was  like  the  bursting  of  a  barrier  behind 
which  the  waters  have  been  silently  gathering.  Now 
vast  stretches  of  the  land  are  again  wildernesses; 
everywhere  silence  save  as  the  hawk  screams  over 
it  and  the  fox  arouses  the  night  echoes.  Whole 
neighborhoods  have  been  abandoned;  school  dis 
tricts  where  sixty  and  seventy  scholars  plowed 
through  the  winter  snow  deserted  completely. 
Again  as  in  the  days  of  the  earlier  generations  are 
the  farms  confined  to  the  river  bottoms  and  the 
easier  worked  plains.  Those  hillside  fields  over 
which  the  fathers  toiled  so  terribly  are  distant  pas 
tures  now,  wild  and  seldom  visited,  or  else  they  are 
veritable  forests,  and  the  deer,  an  animal  unknown 
to  the  third  and  fourth  generations,  swarm  again  as 
in  the  days  of  the  first  settlers.  Slowly  but  surely 
the  wilderness  again  is  claiming  its  own.  As  the 
hunter  crashes  though  the  thick  woods  he  comes 
constantly  upon  the  great  stone  walls  and  the  rock 
heaps  of  that  race  which  has  vanished  almost  as 
completely  as  the  mound-builders.  Sometimes  he 
finds  the  cellar  hole  and  the  old  well,  and  near  by 
perhaps  a  few  ghastly  skeletons  of  apple-trees,  but 


172  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

there  is  nothing  else  to  tell  him  that  here  only  a 
lifetime  ago  was  a  home  that  had  rung  with  the 
happy  voices  of  children. 

That  exodus  never  has  been  recorded.  There  is 
in  it  the  material  for  a  thousand  tragedies.  What 
heartburnings  in  the  old  homes  from  which  the 
children  had  all  departed!  Here  the  father  and 
mother  abandoned  the  farm  and  went,  too ;  here  the 
mother  died  first  and  the  father  lived  alone  for  a 
time  in  the  home  that  once  had  been  so  full  of 
joyous  life;  and  here  perhaps  it  was  that  the  father 
died  first.  Almost  every  one  of  these  little  aban 
doned  farms  has  a  tragedy  written  over  its  latter 
days.  No  one  can  tell  the  longings,  the  heartburn 
ings,  the  loneliness  of  two  parents  growing  old, 
their  children  all  in  distant  lands,  their  farm  which 
had  always  been  their  home  no  longer  a  thing  of 
value.  A  few  years  they  struggle  along  in  the 
old  round,  but  the  end  is  inevitable.  The  farm 
house  door  closes  forever  when  it  shuts  behind  the 
little  funeral  procession.  The  son  who  has  come  for 
a  few  sad  days  from  the  West  would  gladly  sell  the 
old  place,  but  there  is  no  one  to  buy.  For  a  time 
the  hay  is  sold  to  those  who  will  buy  it,  but  the 
gray  birches  grow  swiftly  over  the  walls,  the  grass 
is  no  longer  worth  the  cutting,  and  the  farm  becomes 
a  pasture.  The  old  buildings,  their  roofs  tumbled 
in,  furnish  shelter  for  a  while  to  the  sheep  and  the 


The  Epic  of  New  England         173 

young  cattle  until  a  spring  fire  clears  the  place  of 
the  rubbish.  The  forest  returns  with  swiftness, 
and  it  blots  out  at  last  the  final  vestige  of  the  labors 
of  man. 

To-day  this  Northland  is  the  country  that  God 
forsook.  A  curse  seems  to  have  fallen  upon  it. 
A  blight  has  fallen  upon  its  fruit-trees;  the  brown- 
tail  and  the  gipsy  moths  have  blasted  it;  the  gray 
birch  is  in  the  old  pastures;  the  lumber-man  and 
the  forest-fire  have  swept  off  its  pines  and  spruce 
and  pointed  firs.  The  churches  are  all  but  aban 
doned.  What  few  farms  there  are  are  taken  more 
and  more  by  French  Canadians  and  other  aliens  who 
know  no  more  of  the  history  of  the  land  than  did 
the  old  Teutons  who  settled  amid  the  Celtic  monu 
ments.  To  them  the  great  stone  cairns,  relics  of 
the  first  clearing,  and  the  double  stone  walls  run- 
ing  for  miles  over  the  hilltops  and  through  tangled 
forests,  and  the  abandoned  cellar  holes  and  wells  in 
distant  pastures  are  as  unintelligible  as  are  the  relics 
of  the  mound-builders  to  the  farmers  of  the  Middle 
West. 

The  cultivated  lands  are  every  year  decreasing. 
In  the  State  of  New  Hampshire,  according  to 
Sanborn,  its  historian,  "More  than  a  million  acres 
cultivated  in  1850  had  gone  back  to  pasturage  and 
woodland  in  1900."  The  native  race  is  swiftly 
dying  out.  In  1900  almost  half  of  the  population 


174  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

of  Massachusetts  were  born  of  foreign  parentage. 
The  hill  towns  are  losing  in  population  steadily. 
Let  me  take  as  a  type  my  boyhood  town  in  Graf  ton 
County.  In  1860  its  population  was  1273;  in  1870, 
876;  in  1880,  728;  in  1890,  679;  in  1900,  630;  in 
1910,  559;  in  1920,  480.  In  1861  in  a  single  day 
a  hundred  young  men  enlisted  from  this  town  for 
the  war,  and  the  greater  number  of  them  never  re 
turned  as  permanent  dwellers.  Whole  neighbor 
hoods  in  the  seventies  migrated  to  Minnesota  and 
to  Iowa.  In  1860  there  was  scarcely  a  foreign- 
born  person  within  the  limits  of  the  township;  to 
day  of  the  small  remnant  that  remains  nearly  25  per 
cent,  are  of  alien  birth.  It  is  so  in  the  whole  State. 
Again  to  quote  Sanborn :  "In  one  generation  the 
foreign-born  in  New  Hampshire  have  trebled  and 
those  of  foreign  parentage  considerably  more  than 
doubled." 

The  epic  of  New  England  centers  about  four 
generations,  and  the  greatest  of  them  was  the  last, 
that  marvelous  single  generation  that  burst  from  its 
borders  like  another  wave  of  vikings  from  the 
north  and  tamed  a  raw  continent.  It  is  a  new  epic 
of  a  new  Jason  who  burst  into  the  unknown  West 
and  wrung  from  it  the  marvelous  golden  fleece 
which  we  pigmies  of  the  later  years  must  look  at 
forever  in  wonder. 


ON  THE  TERMINAL  MORAINE  OF  NEW 
ENGLAND  PURITANISM  * 


ONE  may  not  dwell  long  with  the  biography  or 
the  writings  of  Mary  E.  Wilkins  Freeman  without 
being  reminded  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  There 
is  suggestive  parallelism  at  the  start.  Both  traced 
their  lines  of  descent  to  old  Salem,  Massachusetts, 
and  to  families  which  had  persisted  there  since 
colonial  days.  In  the  line  of  the  one  was  William 
Hawthorne,  a  grim  magistrate  who  ordered  the 
lashing  of  Quakers  and  itinerant  preachers  and 
vagabonds;  and  in  the  line  of  the  other  was  Bray 
Wilkins,  a  judge  in  the  witchcraft  trials  of  a  later 
day.  That  the  two  grimmest  recorders  of  Puritan 
tragedy  and  its  inherited  results  should  have  origi 
nated  in  this  town  of  dark  tradition  is,  we  some 
how  like  to  feel,  not  a  coincidence.  It  sets  us  to 
looking  for  other  parallelisms ;  it  furnishes  us  with 
a  key. 

A  descendant  of  Bray  Wilkins,  Warren  E.  Wil 
kins,  born  in  the  generation  which  began  in  the 

1By  permission  of  Harper  &  Brothers,  publishers  of  "A 
New  England  Nun,"  Modern  Classics  edition. 

175 


176  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

thirties  of  the  last  century,  was  the  first  of  his  line 
to  break  permanently  from  the  Salem  home  and  to 
render  himself  unfixed  of  hearth,  a  man,  in  the 
American  fashion,  of  many  environments.  De 
spite  his  restlessness,  he  was  a  gentle  soul.  Joseph 
Chamberlain,  collaborator  with  Miss  Wilkins  on  the 
novel  "The  Long  Arm,"  has  said  that  "the  Puritan 
seemed  to  survive  in  him,  as  it  does  in  thousands  of 
other  Yankees  of  the  finer  and  unsordid  type, 
merely  in  a  sort  of  exaggerated  nervousness,  con 
scientiousness,  and  general  unworldliness.  He  was 
an  architect  of  the  old  kind,  trained  in  the  building 
trades  rather  than  in  the  schools ;  and  he  varied  this, 
his  true  occupation,  with  a  little  unsuccessful  store- 
keeping  up  at  Brattleboro.  Miss  Wilkins'  mother's 
people  were  of  the  Holbrooks  of  Holbrook — fine 
'genteel  people  of  the  old  sort,'  "  survivals  of  an 
early  New  England  aristocracy.  Wei  shall  find 
many  of  them  depicted  with  tender  care  as  we 
read  "A  Humble  Romance"  and  the  tales  which 
followed  it. 

From  this  union  of  two  branches  of  primitive 
New  England  stock  was  born  Mary  Eleanor  Wilkins 
on  January  7,  1862,  at  Randolph,  a  little  village  half 
an  hour  by  rail  out  of  Boston,  in  a  home  next  door 
to  the  mansion  which  her  grandfather  Holbrook 
had  built  with  his  own  hands. 

There  is  little  to  record  of  her  early  years.     A 


New  England  Puritanism  177 

frail  and  sensitive  child,  unable  to  attend  school,  she 
was  much  by  herself,  a  dreamer  and  an  eager  reader 
in  the  seclusion  of  her  home  while  other  children 
were  playing  at  active  games  in  the  out  of  doors. 
One  thinks  of  this  when  one  reads  of  the  lonely  and 
imaginative  children  scattered  throughout  her  sto 
ries: — Nancy  Wren  in  "A  Gentle  Ghost";  Diantha 
in  'The  Prism" ;  and  the  pathetic  little  soul  in  "Big 
Sister  Solly."  When  she  was  eight  her  parents 
tried  the  experiment  of  sending  her  to  Mount  Hoi- 
yoke  Seminary,  but  in  a  year  her  health  had  become 
so  precarious  that  she  was  withdrawn.  Two  years 
later,  in  1873,  she  removed  with  her  parents  to 
Brattleboro,  Vermont,  a  larger  town  at  the  base  of 
the  Green  Mountains  and  near  the  Connecticut  River. 
"Sometimes  I  wonder,"  she  has  written,  "if  the 
marvellous  beauty  of  that  locality  was  not  largely 
instrumental  in  making  me  try  to  achieve  anything." 
Here  again  she  saw  a  little  of  school  life,  this  time  as 
a  day  pupil  in  a  boarding-school  at  West  Brattle 
boro,  but  not  for  long.  Like  Emily  Bronte,  with 
whom  in  so  many  ways  she  may  be  compared,  she 
was  almost  wholly  self-educated  and  that  in  her 
own  home.  She  was  an  imaginative  child  and  early 
she  created  for  herself  a  world  of  her  own  from  the 
materials  of  her  reading.  "I  read  Dickens  and 
Thackeray  and  Poe,"  she  says,  "and  some  trans 
lations  of  Goethe.  I  also  read  translations  from 


178  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

the  Greek.  I  remember  being  delighted  at  a  very 
early  age  with  some  of  the  Greek  philosophers,  I 
cannot  remember  which.  I  was  on  very  intimate 
terms  with  mythological  people.  I  read  Ossian;  I 
read  a  lot  of  poetry." 

This  Hawthorne-like  seclusion  during  a  shy  and 
dreamy  childhood,  this  perpetual  reading  of  poetry 
and  old  romance  and  far-off  literatures,  made  upon 
her  an  indelible  impression.  Being  "on  very  inti 
mate  terms  with  mythological  people"  meant  that 
the  world  of  fairies  became  to  her  as  real  as  it  was 
to  her  own  heroine  of  "The  Prism,"  who,  through 
the  cut-glass  pendant  which  she  had  appropriated 
from  the  parlor  lamp,  saw  the  whole  fairy  world, 
and  who,  as  she  told  of  her  visions,  had  "in  her 
eyes  a  light  not  of  her  day  or  generation,  maybe 
inherited  from  some  far-off  Celtic  ancestor  .  .  . 
a  strain  of  imagination  which  had  survived  the 
glaring  light  of  latter  days  of  commonness."  And 
then  one  remembers  that  the  author  of  the  story  has 
spoken  of  her  own  ancestry  as  "straight  American, 
with  a  legend  of  French  lineage  generations  back." 
Two  distinct  strains,  indeed,  we  shall  find  in  this 
daughter  of  New  England:  the  Puritan  with  tyran 
nical  conscience  and  grim  repression  of  soul,  and  the 
Gallic  with  lightsomeness  of  fancy  and  exquisite 
sensitiveness  to  beauty. 

The  Gallic  element  was  the  first  to  manifest  it- 


New  England  Puritanism  179 

self.  It  was  only  natural  that  a  child  of  her  tem 
perament  and  rearing  should  begin  to  write  early, 
and  that  her  first  attempts  should  be  lyrical,  should 
be  fanciful  little  songs  for  childhood  and  ballads 
of  fairy-land.  One  may  find  them  in  early  volumes 
of  "St.  Nicholas,"  lyrics  like  "Cross-Patch"  and 
"Rock-a-bye  Baby,"  or  in  "Wide  Awake,"  fairy 
tales  in  prose  like  "The  Cow  with  the  Golden 
Horns,"  which  furnished  the  title  for  her  first  pub 
lished  book,  or  "The  Princess  Rosetta,"  or  "The 
Silver  Hen."  "Given  perfect  freedom  of  choice, 
which  I  was  not  given,"  she  has  said,  "I  might  have 
been  a  lyrist,  but  the  notes  would  certainly  have 
been  intense."  Even  as  a  child  she  had  reveled  in 
the  song-books  of  the  Elizabethans,  and  that  she 
had  read  the  more  modern  masters,  like  Rossetti, 
is  evident  from  such  lyrics  as  "Banbury  Cross": 

"Pray  show  the  way  to  Banbury  Cross/ 

Silver  bells  are  ringing; 
"To  find  the  place  I  'm  at  a  loss," 

Silver  bells  are  ringing; 
"Pass  six  tall  hollyhocks  red  and  white ; 
Then,  turn  the  corner  toward  the  right — " 

and  so  on  and  on.  Her  fairy  ballads  ring  with 
conviction.  She  is  at  her  best  in  dainty  works 
like  "The  Fairy  Flag" ;  in  some  of  her  climaxes,  in 
deed,  she  is  almost  perfect: 


180  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

There  came  a  twang  o'  pearly  harp, 
There  came  a  lilting  loud  and  sweet; 

And  softly  o'er  the  fairy  bridge 

There  came  the  dance  o'  slender  feet. 

In  September,  1881,  when  she  was  twenty,  she  be 
gan  a  series  of  vers  de  societe  lyrics  in  "The  Cen 
tury  Magazine"— -"Sweet  Phyllis,"  "Boy's  Love," 
"It  was  a  Lass,"  and  others,  lyrics  that  were  not 
dimmed  by  their  proximity  in  the  magazine  to 
similar  work  by  James  Whitcomb  Riley,  Frank 
Dempster  Sherman,  H.  C.  Bunner,  and  Andrew 
Lang.  A  lyric  like  this,  for  instance,  written  a 
little  later,  would  enrich  any  collection : 

Now  is  the  cherry  in  blossom,  Love, 

Love  of  my  heart,  with  the  apple  to  follow; 

Over  the  village  at  nightfall  now 

Merrily  veers  and  darts  the  swallow. 

At  nightfall  now  in  the  dark  marsh  grass 
Awakes  the  chorus  that  sings  old  sorrow; 

The  evening  star  is  dim  for  the  dew, 

And  the  apple  and  lilac  will  bloom  to-morrow. 

The  honeysuckle  is  red  on  the  rock; 

The  willow  floats  over  the  brook  like  a  feather; 
In  every  shadow  some  love  lies  hid, 

And  you  and  I  in  the  world  together. 

The  last  of  the  "Century"  series,  "A  Maiden  Lady," 


New  England  Puritanism  181 

is  the  transition  from  her  period  of  poetry  and 
dreams  to  that  of  prose.  From  its  opening  stanza, 

Of  a  summer  afternoon, 
In  a  parlor  window  there, 
She  would  sit,  her  meek  face  showing 
Delicately  long  and  fair, 

Sewing  on  some  dainty  garment,  no  one  ever  saw  her 
wear, 

to  the  last, 

When  she  cried,  poor,  shy  old  maiden, 
Her  artless  secret  saw  the  sun : — 
She  had  been  with  love  acquainted, 
Always,  just  like  anyone: — 
But  had  kept  him  in  a  closet  hidden,  as  a  skeleton, 

we  have  the  material  and  the  method  of  the  short 
stories  which  were  even  then  beginning  to  come :  their 
swift  characterization,  their  touch  of  humor  and  gen 
tle  pathos,  and  their  telling  close.  The  lyric  marks 
the  end  of  one  period  and  the  beginning  of  another. 


The  second  period  in  her  life  came  with  the 
death  of  her  father  in  1883.  Her  last  years  at 
Brattleboro  had  been  filled  with  the  bitterest  ex 
periences  of  bereavement.  Her  only  sister  had 


182  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

died  and  then  her  mother.  For  a  time  she  kept 
house  for  her  father ;  then  he  too  died,  and,  virtually 
alone  in  the  world,  she  returned  to  the  home  of  her 
girlhood  and  took  up  her  residence  with  Miss  Mary 
Wales,  a  friend  of  her  earlier  years.  "I  returned 
to  Randolph,  Massachusetts,"  she  says  with  typical 
incisiveness,  "and  made  my  home  with  friends.  I 
was  forced  to  work  for  my  mere  living,  and  of 
course  continued  writing,  which  I  had  already  be 
gun,  although  when  my  father,  the  last  of  my 
family,  died,  I  had  earned  very  little.  ...  I  wrote 
no  more  vers  de  societe,  no  more  'Cherries  in  Blos 
som.'  I  had  to  earn  my  living.  I  also  had  an 
aunt  to  support.  .  .,  .  I  had  written  onjly  three 
stories,  that  is  real  stories  for  adults.  One  was  a 
prize  story,  fifty  dollars,  the  others  were  accepted 
by  Harper  &  Brothers." 

The  prize-winning  story,  "A  Shadow  Family," 
was  printed  in  the  Boston  paper  which  had  conducted 
the  contest;  the  second  story,  "Two  Old  Lovers," 
was  accepted  by  "Harper's  Bazar,"  then  edited  by 
Mary  L.  Booth,  who  was  the  first  to  discover  the 
new  short  story  writer;  and  the  third,  "A  Humble 
Romance,"  was  published  in  "Harper's  Monthly" 
in  June,  1884.  From  now  on  she  became  a  writer 
of  short  fiction,  a  literary  craftsman,  writing  to  the 
limit  of  her  strength,  not  what  she  would,  but  what 
she  must  if  she  was  to  sell  her  product  and  win 


New  England  Puritanism  183 

immediate  success,  which  in  her  case  was  necessary. 
"Circumstances,"  she  has  said,  "seemed  to  make  it 
imperative  for  me  that  I  do  that  one  thing  and  no 
other.  I  did  not  at  the  time  think  much  about  the 
choice.  I  think  more  now." 

She  was  influenced,  perhaps  molded,  by  her  times. 
The  eighties,  at  the  opening  of  which  she  began  to 
work,  stand  in  American  fiction  for  "local  color." 
In  1884,  when  her  stories  began  first  to  appear  in 
the  Harper  publications, -the  literature-of-locality 
tide,  with  its  dialect  and  its  strangeness  of  materials, 
was  at  its  full.  During  this  single  year  there  were 
published  "In  the  Tennessee  Mountains"  by  Charles 
Egbert  Craddock,  "Mingo  and  Other  Sketches"  by 
Joel  Chandler  Harris,  "On  the  Frontier"  by  Bret 
Harte,  "Doctor  Sevier"  by  Cable,  "Huckleberry 
Finn"  by  Mark  Twain,  "Old  Mark  Langston"  by 
Richard  Malcolm  Johnston,  "The  Story  of  a  Coun 
try  Town"  by  Edgar  W.  Howe,  "Tompkins  and 
Other  Folks"  by  Philander  Deming,  "A  Country 
Doctor"  by  Sarah  Orne  Jewett,  and  "The  San 
Rosario  Ranch"  by  Maude  Howe.  Thomas  Nelson 
Page's  story  "Marse  Chan,"  written  entirely  in  the 
negro  dialect,  was  now  brought  out  and  published 
after  having  been  held  by  the  magazine  timidly  for 
several  years,  and  immediately  it  was  hailed  by  the 
reading  public  as  a  modern  classic.  The  period 
of  dialect  was  at  its  height;  no  wonder  that  Miss 


184  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Wilkins's  second  story  in  "Harper's  Monthly," 
"An  Honest  Soul,"  began,  as  most  assuredly  it 
would  not  have  begun  in  Hawthorne's  day,  with  the 
sentence :  "Thar  's  Mis'  Bliss's  pieces  in  the  brown 
kaliker  bag,  an'  thar  's  Mis'  Bennett's  pieces  in  the 
bed-tickin'  bag."  There  are  fashions  in  literature 
as  there  are  fashions  in  wearing  apparel,  and  one 
who  would  live  by  literature  must  be  aware  of  them 
or  else  write  for  posterity.  The  new  writer  was 
in  no  position  to  become  a  rebel  even  if  she  had 
desired,  .and  she  therefore  began  to  make  localized 
studies  of  the  life  about  her,  even  as  Miss  Murfree 
was  doing,  and  Page  and  Harris  and  Cable. 

The  New  England  of  the  eighties  seemingly  had 
been  exhausted  as  a  background  for  fiction.  Mrs. 
Stowe  had  used  it  freely  and  Rose  Terry  Cooke  and 
Sarah  Orne  Jewett  and  Howells  and  others,  but 
there  had  been  little  attempt  as  yet  to  study  it  with 
the  new  focus,  to  seek  for  the  strange,  the  unique 
in  background  and  character.  The  times  demanded 
Colonel  Starbottles  and  Yuba  Bills,  Ramonas  and 
Colonel  Sellerses,  Posson  Joneses  and  Mingos,  and 
to  find  them  in  New  England  one  must  seek  for  them 
in  that  terminal  moraine  of  human  specimens  which 
the  New  England  glacial  period  of  puritanism 
had  left  in  its  wake:  abnormalities  of  conscience, 
freedom  of  will  become  narrow  wilfulness,  unswerv 
ing  allegiance  to  an  idea  degenerated  into  balkiness, 


New  England  Puritanism  185 

frugality  engendered  by  a  scanty  soil  warped  into 
a  Silas-Berry-like  meanness  of  soul,  the  sensitive 
ness  born  of  isolated  environment  became  the  very 
essence  of  sullen  pride  and  egotism,  and  added  to 
all  this  a  patriarchal  sense  of  masculine  superiority 
and  headship  of  households,  based  on  a  narrow  in 
terpretation  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  which  has 
resulted  in  a  type  of  womanhood  often  so  individual 
and  so  peculiar  in  its  tragic  problems  as  to  be  classi 
fiable  as  unique. 

It  was  into  this  field  of  investigation  that  Miss 
Wilkins  threw  herself  with  all  the  intensity  of  her 
lyric  soul.  She  chose  the  short  story  form  of  ex 
pression  partly  because  it  was  the  fashion  of  the 
time  but  chiefly  because  it  promised  the  most  im 
mediate  results.  "What  directed  me  to  the  short 
story?  I  think  the  answer  is  very  simple.  The 
short  story  did  not  take  so  long  to  write,  it  was 
easier,  and  of  course  I  was  not  sure  of  my  own 
ability  to  write  even  the  short  story,  much  less  a 
novel.  I  consider  the  art  of  the  novel  as  a  very 
different  affair  from  that  of  the  short  story.  The 
latter  can  be  a  simple  little  melody,  the  other  can  be 
grand  opera."  Her  New  England  conscience  de 
manded  moral  basis  for  her  art,  her  lyric  soul  could 
express  itself  only  with  intensity;  therefore  the  seri 
ousness  of  her  themes,  the  swift  rush  of  her  narra 
tive  without  pause  for  ornament  or  background,  the 


186  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

absorption  of  soul  that  forgot  itself  in  its  eager 
contemplation  of  the  drama  unfolding  before  her. 
Her  vogue  came  not  from  any  new  information  that 
she  gave  concerning  her  material  or  life  in  general: 
it  came  from  her  originality  of  method,  her  grip 
ping  intensity,  her  power  to  move  the  reader's  emo 
tions. 

In  1887  twenty-eight  of  her  short  stories  were 
published  in  a  collection  entitled  "A  Humble  Ro 
mance  and  Other  Stories."  Her  first  real  books, 
"The  Cow  with  the  Golden  Horns"  and  "The  Ad 
ventures  of  Ann,"  collections  of  early  juvenile  stories 
for  "Wide  Awake,"  had  been  published  without 
her  knowledge.  The  book  produced  no  such  sensa 
tion  as  did  the  first  collections  of  Harte  and  Miss 
Murfree  and  Cable  and  Harris.  The  New  York 
"Critic,"  the  leading  critical  journal  of  its  day  in 
America,  dismissed  it  with  seven  lines,  half  of  them 
patronizing  praise  and  half  protest  against  the 
grotesque  impossibility  of  one  of  her  characters. 
Holmes  and  Lowell,  however,  felt  the  power  of  the 
new  writer  and  congratulated  her.  General  recog 
nition  came  slowly.  The  year  1890  may  be  set  as 
the  date  of  her  final  triumph.  The  "Critic"  again 
noticed  her,  this  time  with  the  simple  announcement 
that  "There  is  something  like  a  craze  in  England  over 
Mary  E.  Wilkins."  Then  had  come  the  full  tide 
of  her  popularity.  When  a  year  later,  in  1891, 


New  England  Puritanism  187 

"A  New  England  Nun  and  Other  Stories"  appeared, 
most  of  the  American  critics  echoed  the  review 
of  the  London  "Spectator":  "The  stories  are 
among  the  most  remarkable  feats  of  what  we  may 
call  literary  impressionism  in  our  language,  so 
powerfully  do  they  stamp  on  the  reader's  mind  the 
image  of  the  classes  and  individuals  they  portray 
without  spending  on  the  picture  a  single  redundant 
word,  a  single  superfluous  word." 

The  decade  from  1887,  the  year  of  "A  Humble 
Romance,"  to  "Madelon:  a  Novel,"  1896,  was  the 
golden  period  of  her  genius.  It  was  the  period  of 
short  stories  in  her  first  manner :  stories  bare  of  all 
save  the  absolute  essentials,  staccato  in  style,  often 
crude  even  to  incorrectness,  yet  so  vibrant  with 
human  life  that  they  hold  their  reader  now  with  in 
tense  sympathy,  now  with  indignation,  now  with 
pleasure,  now  with  something  like  fear.  "Young 
Lucretia  and  Other  Stories,"  juvenile  tales  from 
"St.  Nicholas,"  came  in  1892,  and  "Jane  Field," 
which  by  every  standard  of  criticism  is  a  short 
story,  began  as  a  serial  in  "Harper's  Monthly"  the 
same  year.  Two  years  later,  in  1894,  in  "Harper's 
Weekly,"  came  "Pembroke,"  nominally  a  novel,  but 
really  a  series  of  short  story  episodes.  All  the 
stories  in  "Silence  and  Other  Stories,"  1898,  were 
written  during  this  period,  the  last  of  them  being 
"Evelina's  Garden,"  which  appeared  in  "Harper's'* 


188  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

in  June,  1896.  It  was  the  decade  of  her  most 
spontaneous  work,  the  period  of  her  young  enthusi 
asm. 

In  the  joy  and  the  wonder  of  her  success  her 
youthful  dreams  of  literature  came  again.  "Miss 
Wilkins  informs  me  that  she  has  always  had  a 
desire  to  write  a  play,"  wrote  Mr.  Charles  E, 
Wingate  in  one  of  his  Boston  letters  of  the  period. 
She  had  actually  begun  upon  one  and  like  Haw 
thorne  she  turned  for  her  material  to  old  Salem  and 
its  great  tragedy.  In  1890  she  had  finished  "Giles 
Corey,  Yeoman :  a  Play,"  and  it  had  been  read  with 
high  approval  at  the  Deerfield  summer  school  of 
history  and  romance.  Later  on,  completely  re 
written,  it  was  given  a  trial  on  the  Boston  stage, 
and,  to  be  brief,  it  failed,  completely  and  definitely. 
Undoubted  power  and  literary  beauty  it  had,  but 
its  writer  knew  nothing  of  stagecraft,  and  more 
over  its  sponsors  handled  it  with  awkwardness,  and 
its  failure  was  total.  Poetry,  too,  still  called  to 
her.  In  1897  she  issued  "Once  Upon  a  Time 
and  Other  Child  Verses,"  and  more  and  more  in 
frequently  she  sent  lyrics  to  the  leading  magazines. 
One  may  find  as  late  as  1900  such  sonnets  as  "Cyrano 
de  Bergerac"  in  "Harper's"  and  "The  Lode  Star" 
in  "Scribner's,"  lyrics  that  make  us  wonder  what 
might  have  been  had  she  been  able  to  dedicate  all 
of  her  powers  to  the  elder  muses. 


New  England  Puritanism  189 


in 

It  was  in  this  second  period  then,  the  period 
which  ended  with  "Pembroke"  and  the  exquisite 
story  "Evelina's  Garden,"  that  Miss  Wilkins  made 
her  strongest  and  most  original  contribution  to 
American  literature.  But  criticism  had  been  doing 
its  work.  Almost  every  reviewer  since  her  first 
book  had  closed  his  review  by  pointing  out  her 
bareness  and  repression  of  style,  her  short,  almost 
gasping  sentence  structure  and,  in  the  case  of  'Tern- 
broke,"  which  had  run  serially  as  a  novel,  had  noted 
its  looseness  of  structure.  They  declared  it  to  be 
like  "Jane  Field/'  of  short  story  texture  rather  than 
a  novel,  and  they  bade  her  back  to  her  earlier  field, 
often  with  the  observation  that  the  short  story  by 
its  very  nature  unfits  one  who  has  long  used  it  for 
any  other  form  of  fiction. 

That  Miss  Wilkins  was  aware  of  this  criticism 
cannot  be  doubted.  In  the  only  bit  of  literary 
criticism  that  I  can  find  from  her  pen,  a  critique  of 
Emily  Bronte  written  in  1903,  she  has  expressed  the 
opinion  that  had  the  author  of  "Wuthering  Heights" 
"lived  longer  she  might  have  become  equally  ac 
quainted  with  the  truth  and  power  of  grace;  she 
might  have  widened  her  audience;  she  might  have 


190  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

attracted  instead  of  repelled,  but  she  could  not  have 
written  a  greater  book,  so  far  as  the  abstract  qual 
ity  of  greatness  goes."  Were  Emily  Bronte  alive 
to-day  she  might  reply  to  her  critic:  "Your  own 
experience  would  seem  to  show  that  this  is  true. 
You  lived  longer  than  I,  you  sought  to  become  ac 
quainted  with  the  truth  and  power  of  grace,  you 
strove  to  attract  and  please,  you  widened  your  au 
dience,  but  unquestionably  you  wrote  nothing  so 
great  as  your  first  work,  so  far  as  the  abstract 
quality  of  greatness  goes."  The  retort  would  sum 
up  the  quality  of  her  final  period,  her  period  of 
novels,  beginning  with  "Madelon,"  of  experiments 
ki  style  and  technique,  of  conscious  art. 

One's  first  impression  as  one  approaches  the  work 
of  Mary  E.  Wilkins  Freeman  is  a  feeling  of  sur 
prise  at  its  bulk.  Her  industry  has  been  remark 
able.  "Edgewater  People,"  1918,  was  her  thirty- 
eighth  book.  Beginning  with  "Madelon,"  1896, 
she  wrote  nine  major  novels  in  twelve  years,  the 
most  of  them  for  serial  publication  in  magazines, 
and  during  the  same  time  she  issued  nine  collections 
of  short  stories.  The  total  of  her  short  stories  in 
all  her  collections  is  173,  and  in  addition  she  has 
written  about  sixty-five  more  which  have  never 
been  republished  from  the  magazines.  Seventy- 
one  of  her  short  stories  appeared  in  "Harper's 
Magazine"  alone.  Moreover,  in  addition  to  the 


New  England  Puritanism  191 

nine  novels  mentioned  above,  she  has  written  either 
wholly  or  in  part  six  other  stories  which  are  gener 
ally  rated  as  novels.  When  her  physical  frailness  is 
considered  and  the  ill  health  that  she  has  struggled 
with  her  life  long,  the  quantity  of  her  literary  out 
put  is  not  the  least  of  her  claims  upon  our  wonder. 
One  is  next  impressed  by  the  variety  in  her  work, 
especially  in  the  output  after  "Pembroke."  It 
seems  like  the  work  of  an  experimenter,  of  one  who 
is  careful  to  adapt  her  products  to  the  standards  of 
the  various  markets  that  may  care  to  buy  them. 
In  1895  came  a  detective  novel  founded  on  the 
Borden  murder  case  in  Massachusetts,  "The  Long 
Arm,"  which,  revised  by  Mr.  Chamberlain  of  the 
"Youth's  Companion,"  won  the  first  prize  of  $2000 
from  three  thousand  competitors.  The  next  year 
came  "Madelon,"  an  intense  love  story  with  a 
heroine  not  of  New  England  ancestry,  a  maiden 
partly  French  and  partly  Indian,  who  in  her  savage, 
unreasoning  cleaving  to  her  lover  reminds  us  of 
the  lovers  in  Emily  Bronte's  romance.  Quickly 
following  it  came  "Jerome,  a  Poor  Young  Man," 
the  longest  and  most  elaborate  of  her  fiction,  a 
novel  of  purpose  for  "Harper's  Weekly,"  a  sermon 
for  the  times.  Abandoning  her  early  method  of 
standing  detached  from  her  material,  she  became 
a  propagandist,  a  sentimentalist  with  a  theory,  a 
pleader  for  the  under  dog  in  the  industrial  battle. 


192  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

With  her  next  novel,  "The  Jamesons,"  contributed 
as  a  serial  to  "The  Ladies'  Home  Journal,"  she 
tried  still  another  experiment.  We  may  call 
it  a  "period  story,"  a  serio-comic  satire  upon 
the  fads  and  foibles  of  its  time.  From  its 
very  nature  it  is  ephemeral  work,  as  ephemeral 
as  a  fashion-plate.  Mrs.  Jameson,  a  city  woman 
who  sets  out  to  reform  a  little  country  town  and 
to  give  it  city  ideals,  is  a  caricature.  No  sane 
woman  in  America,  no  matter  what  has  been  her 
training,  will  be  so  ignorant  of  country  life  as  to 
feed  her  pigs  on  alternate  days  so  the  bacon  may 
have  alternate  streaks  of  fat  and  lean,  or  will 
insist  on  setting  hens  on  hard-boiled  eggs  so  that  the 
nests  may  be  thoroughly  antiseptic.  It  is  not  even 
good  comedy.  This  was  in  1899.  The  next  year, 
the  year  of  "To  Have  and  to  Hold,"  "When  Knight 
hood  was  in  Flower,"  and  "Alice  of  Old  Vincennes," 
she,  too,  wrote  a  historical  romance,  "The  Heart's 
Highway,  a  Romance  of  Virginia  in  the  Seventeenth 
Century,"  vibrant  with  passion,  in  flowing,  gorgeous 
sentences  that,  compared  with  those  of  her  earlier 
work,  are  as  hot-house  roses  compared  with  the 
wild  violets  of  a  New  Hampshire  springtime.  A 
passage  like  this  certainly  has  little  in  it  to  remind 
one  of  the  stories  in  her  first  collections : 

As  we  followed  on  that  moonlight  night,  she  and  I 
alone,  of  a  sudden  I  felt  my  youth  and  love  arise  to 


New  England  Puritanism          193 

such  an  assailing  of  the  joy  of  life,  that  I  knew  myself 
dragged  as  it  were  by  it,  and  had  no  more  choosing  as 
to  what  I  should  not  do.  Verily  it  would  be  easier  to 
lead  an  army  of  malcontents  than  one's  own  self. 
And  something  there  was  about  the  moon-light  on  that 
fair  Virginian  night,  and  the  heaviness  of  the  honey- 
scents,  and  the  pressure  of  life  and  love  on  every  side, 
in  bush  and  vine  and  tree  and  nest,  which  seemed  to 
overbear  me  and  sweep  me  along  on  the  crest  of  some 
green  tide  of  spring.  Verily  there  are  forces  of  this 
world  which  are  beyond  the  overcoming  of  mortal 
man  so  long  as  he  is  encumbered  by  his  mortality. 


IV 

After  her  marriage  in  1902  to  Dr.  Charles  M. 
Freeman,  whom  she  had  first  met  in  the  home  of 
Dr.  Alden,  and  her  removal  to  Metuchen,  New 
Jersey,  where  she  has  since  made  her  home,  she  de 
voted  herself  for  several  years  to  short  story  work, 
but  in  1905  she  published  in  "Harper's  Bazar"  a 
long  novel,  "The  Debtor,"  then  the  next  year  in 
"Harper's  Weekly"  "By  the  Light  of  the  Soul," 
and  since  that  time  she  has  issued  "Doc  Gordon," 
1906,  "The  Shoulders  of  Atlas,"  1908,  "Butterfly 
House,"  a  serial  in  "The  Woman's  Home  Com 
panion,"  and  finally,  in  collaboration  with  Mrs. 
Florence  Morse  Kingsley,  "The  Alabaster  Box"— 
surely  a  miscellaneous  collection.  One  need  not 


194  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

linger  long  with  these  books.  Almost  without  ex 
ception  they  lack  constructive  art :  the  plot  in  many 
of  them  is  improbable,  it  does  not  steadily  and  in 
evitably  grow  to  a  culmination,  the  ending  often  is 
weak.  Their  power,  and  all  of  them  have  unques 
tioned  elements  of  strength,  lies  in  parts  instead  of 
wholes,  in  passages  and  episodes,  in  vivid  character 
ization,  in  pictures,  however,  of  completed  character 
rather  than  in  tracings  of  gradual  character  develop 
ment  ;  in  short  story  technique,  in  short,  rather  than 
in  novelistic  art.  In  many  of  the  novels  there  is 
a  distinct  gain  in  sentence  length  and  fluidity  of 
style,  yet  one  feels  every  such  gain  has  been  at  the 
expense  of  spontaneity  and  convincingness. 

Much  better  may  one  linger  over  the  ninety-five 
and  more  short  stories  which  she  wrote  during  the 
period.  Like  her  novels  they  show  a  surprising 
variety  of  types  of  fiction  and  like  them  a  sur 
prising  unevenness.  That  they  are  not  all  of  them 
on  the  level  of  her  earlier  work  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at;  no  literary  crop  so  quickly  exhausts  the  soil  as 
the  short  story.  A  single  collection  of  studies  of 
localized  environment  is  all  that  most  writers  can 
make  with  profit,  as  witness  Harte  and  Cable,  Miss 
Murfree  and  Page.  Mrs.  Freeman  in  her  short 
story  work  has  clung  to  her  New  England  themes 
and  characters  as  tenaciously  as  Harte  clung  to 
California  and  with  something  of  the  same  result. 


New  England  Puritanism  195 

Some  of  these  later  stories  have  about  them,  like  so 
many  of  her  novels,  the  odor  of  the  market-place. 
They  were  made  to  order.  In  "People  of  Our 
Neighborhood,'*  for  instance,  published  in  a  domestic 
journal,  she  seems  deliberately  to  have  exploited 
her  powers  of  characterization.  Often,  moreover, 
there  is  evidence  of  haste,  of  jaded  enthusiasm,  of 
diminishing  returns  from  an  over-cultivated  area. 
And  yet,  despite  all  this,  one  may  say  with  confidence 
that  the  general  average  of  her  later  short  story 
work  is  higher  than  that  of  the  later  short  story 
average  of  any  American  contemporary,  and  that 
here  and  there  in  her  later  collections  one  may  find 
a  story  that  comes  fully  up  to  the  highest  achieve 
ments  of  her  time. 

In  many  of  her  later  short  stories  she  tried,  as  in 
her  novels,  to  enrich  her  style,  to  rid  herself  of  the 
mannerisms  of  the  eighties,  and,  in  some  of  her 
collections,  to  change  the  key  of  her  work,  and  to 
attempt  themes  more  in  accord  with  her  earlier 
ambitions.  "The  most  of  my  work,"  she  has  said, 
and  there  is  a  touch  of  the  pathetic  in  her  words, 
"is  not  really  the  kind  that  I  myself  like.  I  want 
more  symbolism,  more  mysticism.  I  left  that  out 
because  it  struck  me  people  did  not  want  it,  and 
I  was  forced  to  consider  selling  qualities."  A  faint 
trace  of  symbolism,  Hawthorne-like  in  its  sugges- 
tiveness,  pervades  all  her  best  work.  One  sees 


196  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

it  in  the  gradual  stoop  that  came  to  the  stubborn 
Barney  Thayer  and  that  was  overcome  when  once 
he  threw  off  his  burden  of  pride,  and  one  sees  it  in 
a  story  published  as  late  as  1917,  "The  Cloak  Also," 
in  which  the  condition  of  the  neighboring  river  is 
constantly  mentioned  in  connection  with  the  leading 
character,  Joel  Rich,  the  defrauded  storekeeper,  who 
suddenly,  like  the  river  after  the  hot  spring  day, 
broke  the  bonds  that  so  long  had  held  him  and 
swept  over  his  customers  with  a  torrent  of  truth 
about  themselves.  The  story  ends  thus:  "There 
was  a  breaking-up«  of  human  meanness  and  dis 
honesty  greater  than  the  breaking-up  of  the  ice  in 
the  great  river/'  One  might  illustrate,  too,  with, 
Amarina,  in  the  story  "Amarina's  Roses,"  the  "last 
of  the  Deering  women"  who  was  herself  a  rose,  "an 
instance  of  endurance  instead  of  degeneration.  She 
was  as  perfect  as  one  of  the  roses  in  her  garden, 
which  had  come  of  the  reproduction  of  many  genera 
tions  of  bloom."  This  is  the  theme  of  her  volume 
"Understudies,"  poetic  exercises  in  symbolism, 
flowers  and  animals  so  treated  as  to  suggest  women 
and  men,  and  also  of  her  collection  "Six  Trees," 
stories  of  people  who  are  not  only  analogous  to 
certain  trees,  but  in  some  subtle  way  are  bound  to 
them  in  their  lives  and  destinies.  Her  treatment 
of  the  mystic  world  is  also  Hawthorne-like  in  its 
subtle  art.  No  literary  theme  is  so  disastrous  to 


New  England  Puritanism  197 

the  unskilful;  none  requires  of  its  user  more  con 
summate  skill.  As  a  teller  of  ghost  stories  few 
have  surpassed  her.  She  has  no  tales  of  vulgar 
horror;  the  usual  machinery  of  such  stories  she 
throws  away;  the  boundaries  between  the  seen  and 
the  unseen  she  does  not  set.  Of  her  ghosts  one 
may  hardly  say  whether  they  are  of  the  earth  or 
not :  they  are  maidens  who  have  merely  faded 
away  from  their  ghostlike  lives.  There  is  a  gentle 
mystery  in  her  very  titles :  "The  Southwest 
Chamber,"  "Shadows  on  the  Wall,"  "Luella  Miller," 
"The  Vacant  Lot,"  "The  Wind  in  the  Rosebush." 
Not  all  her  stories  deal  with  the  New  England 
environment.  Some  of  them  are  parables  like  many 
of  Hawthorne's.  "A  Slip  of  the  Leash,"  for  in 
stance,  which  may  be  compared  with  the  elder 
romancer's  "Wakefield,"  makes  us  wonder  what 
might  have  been  had  she  earlier  confined  herself 
to  such  themes.  The  story  is  universal.  The  head 
of  a  prosperous  family  in  the  far  West  becomes 
more  and  more  oppressed  by  the  chains  of  conven 
tion  that  have  bound  him  hand  and  foot  to  one 
spot  and  one  round  of  life.  The  eternal  monotony 
of  civilization  lays  more  and  more  hold  upon  his 
soul,  until  one  day  in  the  restlessness  of  the  early 
springtime,  "rasped  beyond  endurance,"  he  drops 
everything  by  an  impulse  and  disappears  into  the 
perfect  freedom  of  the  forest.  Month  after  month 


198  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

he  lingers  upon  the  outskirts  of  the  settlement,  watch 
ing  the  slow  adjustment  of  his  family  to  their  new 
life  without  him.  Year  after  year  goes  by.  The 
subtle  changes  in  the  woman  who  was  his  wife  as* 
the  sense  of  widowhood  comes  upon  her  and  then 
gradually  fades  into  a  new  sense  of  freedom,  and 
the  consequent  changes  in  the  characters  of  his 
children,  all  are  noted  by  the  man  as  he  stands  un 
seen  and  silently  protects  them.  Then  finally,  by  an 
other  impulse,  he  returns  like  Wakefield,  takes  up 
the  thread  of  his  life  where  he  had  dropped  it  so 
long  before,  and  all  moves  again  in  the  old  channel, 
but  in  the  meantime  the  souls  of  the  man  and  the 
woman  have  been  laid  open  to  our  gaze,  and  with 
a  start  we  find  ourselves  asking  the  ancient  ques 
tion,  "Lord,  is  it  I?"  She  has  done  nothing 
stronger.  It  is  enough  in  itself  to  warrant  our 
statement  that  in  her  last  period,  the  period  that 
has  been  so  consistently  assailed  by  her  critics,  her 
powers  as  a  writer  of  short  stories  did  not  wholly 
decline.  As  late  as  1909  the  New  York  "Nation," 
reviewing  her  book,  "The  Winning  Lady  and  Other 
Stories,"  could  call  it  the  best  of  all  her  collections. 


VI 

It  is,  however,  the  short  stories  of  her  earliest 
collections,   "A  Humble  Romance"  and  "A  New 


New  England  Puritanism  199 

England  Nun,"  with  "Pembroke"  which  followed, 
that  will  give  her  her  final  place  among  American 
writers.  In  these  we  have  her  first  spontaneous 
work;  work  that  is  hers  alone,  and  that  has  fur 
nished  a  short  story  type  which  no  one  may  imitate 
without  detection  any  more  than  one  may  imitate 
the  work  of  Irving  or  of  Poe.  This  element  of 
originality  is  the  first  that  must  be  considered  by 
the  critic.  We  of  a  later  day,  to  whom  the  manner 
has  become  familiar,  do  not  realize  how  startlingly 
novel  these  tales  appeared  to  their  first  readers.  In 
1887,  the  year  of  ''A  Humble  Romance/'  Kipling 
was  unknown  in  America:  the  first  mention  of  his 
name  in  the  "Critic"  was  in  March,  1890.  It  was 
in  1893,  ten  years  after  Miss  Wilkins's  removal, 
that  he  also  took  up  his  residence  in  Brattleboro  and 
that  his  loud  trumpet  began  to  dominate  the  fiction 
of  the  decade.  The  first  surprise  at  the  work  of 
Miss  Wilkins  came  from  her  method,  her  peculiar 
perspective,  her  style,  her  startling  originality. 
She  appeared  suddenly,  almost  without  forebears; 
seemingly  she  had  been  influenced  by  no  one.  "Con 
cerning  any  influence  of  other  writers,"  she  has 
written  of  herself,  "it  may  seem  egotistical,  but 
there  was  none.  I  did,  however  strange  it  may 
seem,  stand  entirely  alone.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I 
would  read  nothing  which  I  thought  might  influence 
me.  I  had  not  read  the  French  short  stories ;  I  had 


200  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

not  read  Miss  Jewett's  stories.  I  will  add  that, 
although  I  have  repeatedly  heard  that  I  was  founded 
on  Jane  Austen,  I  have  never  read  any  of  her 
books." 

This  independence  accounts  for  many  crudities  in 
her  earlier  work,  and  it  accounts  also  for  most  of 
those  elements  in  her  short  stories  that  have  given 
her  the  place  that  is  hers.  She  was  herself  and  no 
one  else.  Her  short  sentence  structure  is  a  part 
of  her  personal  equation;  it  is  her  literary  length  of 
stride.  When  she  attempts  more  elaborate  struc 
ture  she  becomes  self-conscious  and  unconvincing. 
All  her  efforts  in  her  novels  to  gain  a  more  flowing 
style  have  been  unable  to  give  her  the  long  sentence 
habit.  As  late  as  1913  she  could  begin  a  story 
with  a  paragraph  like  this : 

Jim  Bennett  had  never  married.  He  had  passed 
middle  life  and  possessed  considerable  property. 
Susan  Adkins  kept  house  for  him.  She  was  a  widow 
and  a  very  distant  relative.  Jim  had  two  nieces,  his 
brother's  daughters.  One,  Alma  Beecher,  was  mar 
ried;  the  other,  Amanda,  was  not.  The  nieces  had 
naively  grasping  views  concerning  their  uncle  and  his 
property. 

It  is  as  bare  and  as  disjointed  as  a  scenario.  The 
writer  has  concentrated  upon  four  persons  and  a 
situation,  and  she  presents  her  material  intensely 
with  no  more  thought  of  ornamentation  than  had 


New  England  Puritanism          201 

her  Puritan  ancestors  when  they  poured  out  their 
burning  convictions  of  sin  and  salvation.  Every 
where  repression.  The  dialogue  moves  swiftly 
without  explanation;  every  coloring  adjective  is 
primly  removed. 

The  center  of  her  art,  the  beginning  and  the  end 
of  it,  is  humanity,  the  individual  soul.  She 
plunges  at  once  in  medias  res,  usually  with  the  name 
of  her  leading  character.  Her  backgrounds  are 
incidental.  There  is  as  little  description  in  her  best 
stories  as  there  is  in  an  old  ballad.  Swiftly  she  in 
troduces  her  two  or  three  or  four  characters:  they 
reveal  themselves  by  means  of  dialogue,  they  become 
often  fearfully  alive,  they  grip  at  the  heart  or  the 
throat,  and  then  suddenly  with  a  throb  the  story  is 
done,  like  a  ballad.  Unlike  Bret  Harte  or  Miss 
Murfree  or  Hardy,  with  whom  the  physical  land 
scape  is  often  one  of  the  characters  in  the  tale,  she 
so  strips  her  narratives  of  background  that  they 
become  universal  in  their  atmosphere  and  setting. 
The  grim  story  "Louisa"  might  be  a  translation 
from  the  Russian;  "A  Village  Lear"  might  be 
passed  as  a  story  of  Egdon  Heath.  The  most  of 
her  stories  are  localized  only  by  the  fact  that  her 
characters  are  such  as  are  found  solely  within  the 
confines  of  the  old  New  England  puritanism.  Her 
chief  use  of  landscape,  as  has  been  suggested,  is 
Hawthornesque — the  use  of  it  symbolically,  poetic- 


202  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

ally,  as  an  interpreting  or  contrasting  touch  in  her 
human  tragedy  or  comedy.  Thus  the  closing  sen 
tences  in  "A  Village  Lear" :  the  old  man,  dying, 
sees  in  imagination  his  cruel  daughters  transfigured, 
coming  to  him  over  the  meadow  with  love  in  their 
faces,  "jest  as  they  did  when  they  was  young" : 

"Jest  see  'em,  Sary."  The  old  man  laughed.  Out 
of  his  ghastly,  death-stricken  features  shone  the 
expression  of  a  happy  child.  "Jest  look  at  'em,  Sary," 
he  repeated. 

Sarah  looked,  and  she  saw  only  the  meadow  covered 
with  a  short  waving  crop  of  goldenrod,  and  over  it 
the  September  sky. 

This  intensity,  repressed  with  New  England  sever 
ity,  is  the  only  style  that  could  fitly  treat  the  material 
that  her  conscience  and  her  stern  sense  of  truth 
furnished  her — the  only  material  that  she  knew. 
Hier  characters  are  like  plants  that  have  sprung  up 
from  a  sterile  soil.  As  subjects  for  fiction  in  the 
older  interpretation  of  fiction  they  seem  impossible : 
tillers  of  rocky  hillsides,  their  natures  warped  by 
their  poverty-stricken  environment ;  old  maids,  prim 
and  angular,  who  have  erected  a  secret  shrine  in 
their  hearts  in  commemoration  of  a  moment  in  the 
long  ago  to  which  a  more  sophisticated  maiden 
would  never  have  given  a  second  thought;  work 
house  inmates,  forlorn  children,  work-worn  wives 
of  driving  men,  stern,  practical-minded  women 


New  England  Puritanism  203 

whom  generations  of  repression  have  rendered  sex 
less — the  descendants  of  come-outers,  noncomform- 
ists,  dissenters,  sons  and  daughters  of  the  men  who 
survived  the  earlier  regime  with  its  blue-laws,  its 
interminable  dialectic,  its  grim  bareness,  and,  added 
to  all  this,  generations  of  solitude  on  hillside  farms 
tilled  in  the  face  of  nature's  protest.  The  result 
was  survivals,  not  of  the  fittest,  but  of  the  worst 
elements — abnormalities,  reliance  upon  inherited 
dogma,  stubbornness  of  head  and  meanness  often. 
Moreover,  the  accumulated  habits  of  generations 
of  wrestlers  with  moral  problems  had  begotten  an 
uneasiness  of  soul  whenever  there  was  a  stepping 
out  of  the  ruts  plowed  by  the  fathers — the  New 
England  conscience.  In  the  stories  of  Miss  Wilkins 
even  the  children  are  victims:  little  Anna  Eliza 
finally  confesses  to  her  grandmother  that  she  lost  her 
patchwork  on  purpose ;  little  Patience,  after  a  heroic 
struggle  with  herself,  braves  the  terrors  of  the  old 
Squire's  presence  and  gives  him  back  the  sixpence 
prize  he  had  awarded  the  best  scholar  in  the  school 
because  at  the  critical  moment  some  one  had  whis 
pered  to  her  the  answer  to  his  question.  In  these 
tales  we  see  not  the  New  England  of  Mrs.  Stowe, 
the  New  England  of  the  high  tide  period,  nor  that 
of  Miss  Jewett,  the  New  England  of  the  transition : 
it  is  the  picture  of  the  swift  decline  and  the  final 
wreckage,  the  distorted  fragments  of  what  once  had 


204  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

been  glorious.  It  is  the  fifth  act  of  the  Puritan 
drama.  A  half-century  before,  the  minister  would 
have  been  the  central  figure  of  a  New  England  vil 
lage  picture;  in  "A  New  England  Nun"  there  are 
only  four  ministers  mentioned,  all  of  them  minor 
figures,  spineless  and  effeminate. 

How  did  this  young  girl  of  twenty-five  know  of 
all  this  human  tragedy,  of  all  these  grim  and  desolate 
lives,  of  all  these  curious  abnormalities  of  soul? 
There  are  pages  in  her  work  as  remorselessly  grip 
ping  as  anything  in  modern  realism.  One  might 
gather  them  into  a  New  England  "Spoon  River 
Anthology" — pictures  of  senility  almost  terrifying, 
as  in  "Louisa";  of  the  parish  workhouse  as  depres 
sing  as  Zola,  in  "Sister  Liddy";  of  human  cruelty 
as  harrowing  as  Balzac's  "Pere  Goriot,"  in  "A  Vil 
lage  Lear."  One  may  reply  in  the  words  of  her 
own  critique  of  Emily  Bronte:  "Hedged  about  by 
great  spaces  of  loneliness  and  insuperable  barriers 
of  religion,  in  an  isolated  parsonage  with  more  of 
the  dead  than  the  living  for  neighbors,  .  .  .  how 
she  ever  came  to  comprehend  the  primitive  brutal 
ities  and  passions,  and  the  great  truth  of  life  that 
sanctifies  them,  is  a  mystery.  The  knowledge  could 
not  have  come  from  any  actual  experience.  The 
book  is  not  the  result  of  any  personal  stress.  She 
had  given  to  her  a  light  for  the  hidden  darkness 
of  human  nature,  irrespective  of  her  own  emotions. 


New  England  Puritanism  205 

A  lamp  was  set  to  her*  feet  in  the  beginning.  If 
a  girl  of  twenty-eight  could  write  a  novel  like 
'Wuthering  Heights/  no  other  conclusion  is  pos 
sible." 

This  impression  is  strengthened  by  another,  an  al 
most  Shaksperian,  element  in  her*  work :  she  stands 
external  to  her  material  and  seemingly  she  is-  irre 
sponsible  for  it.  She  makes  no  comment ;  her  char 
acters  seemingly  are  alone  responsible  for  the  story 
— (they  develop  themselves.  It  is  the  art  of  the 
old  ballad  which  was  anonymous;  the  subjective  is 
absent.  To  quote  again  from  her  critiqufe:  "'All 
that  Emily  Bronte  is  intent  upon  is  the  truth,  the 
exactness  of  the  equations  of  her  characters,  not  the 
impression  which  they,  make  upon  her  readers  or 
herself.  She  handles  brutality  and  coarseness  as 
another  woman  would  handle  a  painted  fan.  It  is 
enough  for  her  that  the  thing  is  so.  It  is  not 
her  business  if  it  comes  down  like  a  sledge-hammer 
upon  the  nerves  of  her  audience,  or  even  if  it  casts 
reflections  derogatory  to  herself." 

Only  in  parts  and  passages  is  her  work  of  "Spoon 
River  Anthology"  texture.  In  soul  she  is  a  ro 
manticist  and  a  poet.  Even  in  her  most  depressing 
material  there  is  little  of  realism  in  the  Zola  sense 
of  the  term.  Her  New  England  critics  declare  that 
her  vision,  so  far  as  at  least  New  England  char 
acter  is  concerned,  is  astigmatic;  that  she  has  given 


206  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

caricatures  rather  than  realistic  studies  from  the  life. 
They  are  wrong  and  they  are  right.  In  reality, 
her  characters  are  of  the  Dickens  type,  not  photo 
graphs  but  paintings,  idealizations  of  the  truth,  in 
dividuals  intensely  alive,  yet  drawn  not  from  the 
life,  but  from  the  heightened  images  projected  by 
their  creator's  imagination.  They  are  therefore, 
in  reality,  like  the  characters  of  Dickens,  mytholog 
ical  creations.  Their  author,  a  nunlike  soul  who 
has  lived  her  whole  life  like  an  Emily  Bronte  in 
the  seclusion  of  a  little  village,  frail  of  body  and 
delicate  of  health,  over-imaginative,  poetic,  intense, 
creates  in  the  quiet  of  her  study  her  own  world. 
Her  materials  are  indeed  scanty.  She  has,  like 
the  Bronte  sisters,  known  little  of  the  actual  lives 
of  men  save  as  feminine  talk  of  a  small  town  has 
brought  them  to  her.  Her  own  heart,  however, 
she  has  known,  and  her  own  dreamings  and  hopes 
and  idealizings.  With  these  phe  did  her  work. 
How  far  unconsciously  she  has  written  autobiog 
raphy  we  may  never  know,  and  yet  we  know  this, 
that  the  writer  of  fiction  which  is  at  all  worth  our 
study  can  have  no  secrets,  and  that  inevitably  he 
spins  his  web  from  his  own  heart.  One  need  say 
no  more.  Her  characters  mostly  are  unmarried 
women.  Of  the  central  figures  in  the  twenty- four 
stories  of  "A  New  England  Nun"  nineteen  are  un 
married  females  and  all  but  five  of  them  are  past 


New  England  Puritanism  207 

middle  age.  Or,  to  go  still  wider,  there  are  in  the 
book,  leaving  out  merely  incidental  personages, 
sixty-seven  characters,  all  but  sixteen  of  whom  are 
women,  just  half  of  them  unmarried. 

With  such  material  there  are  infinite  possibilities 
for  depressed  realism,  and  yet  seldom  are  we  sent 
away  depressed.  Almost  all  her  stories,  and 
some  of  them  against  the  very  protest  of  nature, 
end  happily.  The  lover  returns ;  the  hapless  maiden, 
pathetically  patient  through  years  of  waiting,  is 
married  at  last;  justice  is  done  and  all  is  well. 
Even  "Louisa"  turns  out  happily.  The  Puritan 
conscience  seems  to  consider  it  a  duty  to  justify 
the  ways  of  God  to  man.  Unconsciously  it  is  im 
pressed  with  the  idea  that  it  is  compelled  to  be  a  de 
fender  of  God  and  to  make  life's  plots  come  out 
in  strict  equity,  with  no  injustice  done.  It  is  not 
too  much  to  declare  that  no  descendant  of  the  New 
England  Puritans  can  be  an  absolute  realist. 

Her  favorite  theme  is  revolt.  Her  tale  opens  with 
a  study  of  repression.  The  central  figure  is  bound 
by  inherited  forces  which  hold  him  as  with  steel. 
Sometimes  the  force  is  external,  as  in  the  case  of 
Mrs.  Penn  in  "The  Revolt  of  'Mother/  "  but  more 
often  is  it  internal.  On  the  surface  of  the  life  there 
is  apparent  serenity  and  reserve,  but  beneath  there 
is  an  increasing  fire.  Then  suddenly  the  barriers 
break  and  the  strength  of  the  recoil  is  in  proportion 


208  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

to  the  strength  of  the  repression.  Jane  Field,  once 
the  barrier  of  her  deception  is  down,  spends  the 
rest  of  her  life  in  an  insane  iteration  of  her  story 
of  weakness;  Selma  Woodsum  in  the  fierce  im 
petuosity  of  her  repentence  can  scarce  be  restrained 
from  publishing  in  all  the  papers  the  story  of  her 
violation  of  her  conscience.  It  is  the  central  topic 
of  "Jane  Field";  it  furnished  the  most  gripping 
episode  in  "Pembroke" — the  midnight  coasting  of 
Ephraim;  it  is  the  theme  of  four  stories  in  "A 
New  England  Nun" :  "A  Village  Singer,"  "Sister 
Liddy,"  "Amanda  and  Love,"  "The  Revolt  of 
'Mother'  " ;  and  it  is  central  in  many  later  stories 
like  "Evelina's  Garden,"  "The  Givers,"  "A  Slip 
of  the  Leash,"  "The  Cloak  Also,"  and  "The  Liar." 
She  does  not  present  her  material  merely  to  enter 
tain.  In  all  her  stories  there  is  far  more  than 
the  story.  "The  Revolt  of  'Mother/  "  for  instance, 
might  furnish  a  thesis  on  the  homes  of  farmers, 
and  yet  no  one  may  call  it  a  purpose  story.  There 
are  times  when  the  preacher  that  is  within  every 
descendant  of  New  Englanders  gets  the  better  of 
the  artist,  but  it  is  not  often.  In  "The  Amethyst 
Comb,"  for  example,  she  can  launch  out  like  this : 

When  a  man  or  a  woman  holds  fast  to  youth,  even 
if  successfully,  there  is  something  of  the  pitiful  and 
the  tragic  involved.  It  is  the  everlasting  struggle  of 
the  soul  to  retain  the  joy  of  earth,  whose  fleeting 


New  England  Puritanism  209 

distinguishes  it  from  heaven,  and  whose  retention  is 
not  accomplished  without  an  inner  knowledge  of  its 
futility. 

But  more  often  these  deeper  truths  of  the 
story  are  gold  that  is  far  from  the  surface. 
Never  does  she  present  unlovely  pictures  simply  to 
display  them.  Kipling's  robust  cynicism  is  in  a 
world  apart  from  hers.  She  thinks  well  of  life;  she 
hates  oppression  with  her  whole  New  England  soul, 
and  she  sends  her  reader  away  always  more  kindly 
of  heart,  more  tolerant,  more  neighborly  in  the 
deeper  sense  of  the  word. 

Her  kinship  is  with  Hawthorne  rather  than  with 
the  realists.  Both  worked  in  the  darker  materials 
of  New  England  Puritanism;  both  were  romancers 
and  poets,  both  were  seekers  after  truth,  and  both 
were  able  to  throw  over  their  work  a  subtle  atmos 
phere  that  was  all  their  own.  Hawthorne,  writing 
as  he  did  in  the  mid-nineteenth  century,  in  the  mild 
noon  of  later  German  romance,  suffused  his  work 
with  the  rich  glow  that  the  later  writer,  bound  by 
her  more  prosaic  times,  was  unable  to  find ;  she, 
however,  equal  to  him  in  her  command  of  pathos 
and  of  emotional  intensity,  was  able  to  surpass  him 
in  her  command  of  gripping  situation  and  her 
powers  of  compelling  characterization.  Of  the 
generation  born  since  the  war  she  alone  may  be 
compared  with  this  earliest  depicter  of  the  New 
England  soul. 


THE  SHADOW  OF  LONGFELLOW 

IN  the  third  number  of  his  "Hymns  to  the  Night," 
Novalis  records  that  once  while  he  was  weeping  on 
the  grave  that  had  swallowed  up  his  very  life, 
"alone  as  no  other  mortal  ever  had  been  alone," 
suddenly  there  had  come  upon  him  a  kind  of  shud- 
dery  twilight,  a  new  atmosphere,  that  swept  from 
him  forever  all  desire  for  day.  He  stood  in  a 
new  world,  the  transfigured  world  of  night.  Then 
through  the  mist  there  had  appeared  to  him  the 
glorified  figure  of  his  beloved  who  henceforth  was 
to  be  an  abiding  presence,  and  from  that  moment 
he  had  had  "an  eternal,  unchanging  faith  in  the 
heaven  of  Night." 

It  is  well  known  that  the  death  of  his  betrothed, 
followed  a  few  weeks  later  by  the  death  of  his 
favorite  brother,  made  of  Novalis  a  dreamer  and 
a  mystic.  It  swept  away  from  him  the  boundaries 
between  the  worlds  of  matter  and  of  spirit  until  he 
was  no  longer  sure  that  there  were  boundaries  at 
all.  Henceforth  for  him  the  only  reality  was  the 
unreal.  There  were  to  be  for  him  no  more  sharp 
outlines;  life  was  to  move  in  a  delicious  mist,  amid 
the  half -seen  and  the  dreamy,  in  a  "holy,  inex- 

210 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         211 

pressible,  mysterious  Night. "  Twilight  with  its 
grotesqueries  and  shadows,  allowing  the  imagina 
tion  free  rein,  moonlight  soft  and  ethereal,  delicious 
sadness,  longing  for  something  vaguely  felt  yet 
inexpressible,  crumbling  ruins,  dim  cathedrals,  the 
dream-world  of  medievalism — all  things  where  the 
senses  and  the  reason  lose  perspective  and  must  be 
supplemented  by  the  fancy — these  became  for  him 
the  real.  Day  with  its  commonplaces  was  the  un 
reality.  In  a  word,  he  became  a  romanticist  and 
a  leader  in  that  strange  choir  which  sang  the  de 
cadence  of  the  German  Sturm  und  Drang. 

Almost  identical  was  the  experience  of  our  own 
Longfellow.  The  shock,  the  ,utter  bereavement, 
the  unutterable  loneliness,  the  brooding,  the  vision, 
the  ministry  of  night,  the  mysticism — the  parallel 
is  startling.  He  ran,  it  is  true,  into  no  fantasti- 
cisms,  he  exploited  no  revolution,  he  curbed  no  con 
suming  genius,  yet,  for  all  that,  he  was  the  true  child 
of  Novalis — mystic,  dreamer,  poet  of  the  Night. 
While  all  about  him  were  the  din  and  the  shoutings 
of  a  lusty  young  nation  carving  with  might  a  new 
commonwealth  from  rawr  nature,  he  steadfastly 
held  true  to  his  vision,  for,  says  Novalis,  "he  who 
has  once  stood  on  earth's  borderland  and  perceived 
that  new  county — the  dwelling  of  Night — returns 
no  more  to  the  tumult  of  life,  to  the  land  where 
light  reigns  amid  ceaseless  unrest." 


212  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

The  year  1836  marks  the  opening  of  the  second 
period  in  the  life  of  Longfellow.  All  that  he  pro 
duced  before  it  when  compared  with  the  product 
of  his  later  pen  is  as  different  as  if  written  by  an 
other.  An  earnest,  somewhat  sentimental  youth, 
never  a  boy  among  boys,  horizoned  only  by  his 
father's  library,  he  had  grown  up  like  Hawthorne 
in  a  world  created  by  his  imagination  from  frag 
ments  of  his  reading. 

College  widened  his  opportunities  for  knowing 
books;  it  did  little  more.  The  ancient  classics — 
Homer,  Herodotus,  Vergil,,  Horace — impersonal 
creations  that  seem  as  if  a  part  of  nature  herself, 
not  the  deliberate  work  of  man;  the  English  bards 
— Milton,  Pope,  Dryden,  Gray,  Goldsmith — great 
shadowy  names,  almost  abstractions;  and  then,  all 
of  a  sudden,  a  book  with  the  ink  scarce  dry,  the 
last  numbers  not  yet  written  perhaps — "The  Sketch- 
Book,"  marvelously  modern,  marvelously  beautiful, 
the  work  of  one  who  was  an  American  and  a  con 
temporary  :  it  set  his  pulse  to  running.  He  records 
that  he  "read  each  succeeding  number  with  ever- 
increasing  wonder  and  delight,  spellbound  by  its 
pleasant  humor,  its  melancholy  tenderness,  its  at 
mosphere  of  reverie — nay  even  by  its  gray-brown 
covers,  the  shaded  letters  of  its  titles,  and  the  fair 
clear  type,  which  seemed  an  outward  symbol  of 
its  style."  Following  hard  upon  it  had  come  that 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         213 

chaste  little  book  of  poems  by  Bryant,  then  "The 
Spy"  by  Cooper,  that  first  "seller"  among  American 
novels. 

Authorship  at  last  had  become  a  concrete  thing  in 
the  young  student's  mind.  He,  too,  would  make 
books.  And  it  was  now  that  he  began  to  dream 
of  a  wider  horizon ;  to  turn  with  longing  toward  that 
vague  land  over  which  Irving  had  thrown  his  haze 
of  romance.  "If  I  were  in  England  now,"  writes 
the  college  junior,  "(and  I  have  been  wishing  my 
self  there  all  the  day  long  so  warmly  that  if  my 
wishes  could  but  turn  to  realities  I  should  have  been 
there),  I  should  become  a  bacchanalian  for  a  while. 
I  do  not  believe  that  any  person  can  read  the  fifth 
number  of  the  Sketch-Book  without  feeling  at  least, 
if  not  expressing,  a  wish  similar  to  my  own/' 
But  Europe  and  literature  were  utterly  out  of  the 
question.  The  father  was  in  only  moderate  circum 
stances,  and  he  had,  moreover,  a  supply  of  hard- 
headed  Yankee  wisdom.  "A  literary  life,"  he  wrote 
the  ambitious  senior,  "to  one  who  has  the  means  of 
support,  must  be  very  pleasant,  but  there  is  not 
enough  wealth  in  this  country  to  afford  encourage 
ment  and  patronage  to  merely  literary  men.'*  It 
was  time  for  the  boy  to  settle  down  to  the  studying 
of  his  profession.  A  time  there  was  of  heart-burn 
ing  and  mild  rebellion,  but  there  was  no  help  for  it. 
The  young  graduate  settled  down  to  the  study  of 


214  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

the  law  with  no  prospects  save  those  that  concerned 
the  humdrum  of  his  deeds  and  conveyances  and 
routine  of  the  law  office. 

Then  like  a  flash  out  of  clear  sky  came  the  miracle. 
Where  else  can  you  find  a  little,  struggling  coun 
try  college  sending  a  boy  of  nineteen  to  Europe  to 
fit  him  for  a  chair  in  an  utterly  new  subject,  one 
that  even  Harvard  has  only  just  recognized?  But 
no  such  thoughts  engaged  the  youth.  Away  he 
sailed  into  the  land  of  his  dreams,  into  the  region 
that  'The  Sketch-Book"  had  made  for  him  "a  kind 
of  Holy  Land  lying  far  off  beyond  the  blue  horizon 
of  the  ocean." 

For  three  yeajrs  he  wandered  over  enchanted 
ground — France,  Spain,  Italy,  Germany,  England 
— a  Wunderreise,  a  kind  of  glorified  day-dream 
come  true.  He  came  back  an  enthusiast,  an  inter 
preter,  a  missionary.  There  had  been  no  single 
overmastering  impression,  but  a  broadening,  a  re 
vealing,  an  educating  in  the  broadest  sense.  His 
travel  had  come  at  the  precise  moment  in  his  life 
when  it  could  be  most  effective.  It  had  taken  from 
him  the  Puritan  narrowness  and  intolerance  that 
had  been  his  birthright,  and  it  had  given  him  hori 
zon,  perspective,  and  degrees  of  comparison. 

For  the  next  six  years  he  moved  amid  an  atmos 
phere  of  perpetual  wonder  and  mild  excitement. 
To  talk  with  him,  to  listen  to  his  glowing  lectures, 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         215 

even  to  sit  in  his  class-room,  was  to  get  a  veritable 
whiff  from  that  Old  World  which  to  the  little  pro 
vincial  village  was  so  far  off  and  wonderful.  He 
began  his  work  at  Bowdoin  as  one  opens  a  mission 
in  a  heathen  land.  He  threw  himself  into  the  work 
with  all  the  enthusiasm  of  youth.  There  were 
jio  adequate  text-books — grammars,  readers  for 
learners  of  French,  Spanish,  Italian.  He  would 
make  them  himself.  He  gave  voluntary  courses  of 
lectures;  he  taught  with  unction  and  conviction. 
Bowdoin  was  too  small  for  his  mission  work;  he 
would  broaden  his  field.  He  wrote  studies  and 
introductions  and  appreciations  of  the  Romance  lan 
guages  and  sent  them  abroad  to  his  countrymen  in 
the  best  review  that  America  then  possessed. 

But  the  vision  that  had  come  to  him  in  boy 
hood  over  those  gray-brown  numbers  of  "The 
Sketch-Book"  was  not  forgotten  amid  all  this 
mission  work.  He,  too,  would  be  an  Irving;  he, 
too,  would  issue  books  in  numbers  with  shaded 
letter  titles  and  fair,  clear  print.  Even  while  he  had 
been  in  Gottingen  he  had  outlined  his  literary  plans 
— a  series  of  sketches  after  the  "Sketch-Book" 
pattern.  Poetry,  after  his  first  few  echoes  of 
Bryant,  he  had  laid  aside;  his  vocation  was  to  be 
prose.  "I  am  writing  a  book,"  he  confides  to 
Greene,  during  his  fourth  year  at  Bowdoin,  "a 
kind  of  Sketch-Book  of  France,  Spain,  Germany, 


216  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

and  Italy."  The  book  was  ''Outre  Mer,"  half 
Spain,  a  little  of  Italy,  and  the  rest  France.  It 
was,  indeed,  a  kind  of  "Sketch-Book";  it  even  ap 
peared  in  numbers  with  "gray-brown  covers," 
"shaded  letter  titles,  and  fair,  clear  type."  Irving 
speaks  from  every  chapter;  a  shadowy,  emaciated 
Irving  to  be  sure,  stripped  of  much  of  his  "pleasant 
humor,"  his  "melancholy  tenderness,"  his  "atmos 
phere  of  reverie";  yet  unmistakably  Irving.  It  was 
a  young  man's  book  full  of  high  spirits,  didactic, 
"flowery,"  at  times  even  inflated;  every  book  is  a 
"tome,"  every  clock  a  "horologue."  In  the  history 
of  American  literature  it  has  little  significance;  it 
was  simply  one  of  the  swarm  of  books  that  fluttered 
for  a  time  about  "The  Sketch-Book."  It  is  worth 
noting,  perhaps,  that  the  same  year  that  witnessed 
its  publication  in  book  form  produced  also  Cooper's 
"Sketches  in  Switzerland,"  Willis's  "Pencillings  by 
the  Way,"  and  Tuckerman's  "Italian  Sketch-Book." 
This,  then,  was  the  Longfellow  who,  in  April, 
1835,  in  his  twenty-ninth  year,  started  joyously  with 
his  young  wife  for  his  second  Lehrjahre.  The 
world  was  good;  he  had  been  called  to  Harvard, 
to  the  most  influential  chair  of  modern  languages 
in  America;  his  mission  field  had  been  increased 
a  thousandfold.  The  world  was  good.  It  was 
quite  another  Longfellow  who,  late  the  next  year, 
came  back  alone  and  took  up  a  solitary  residence 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         217 

among  strangers  at  Cambridge).  On  November 
29  his  wife  had  died  at  Rotterdam. 

We  know  very  little  of  this  crisis  in  the  poet's 
life.  With  a  brother's  delicacy  his  biographer 
passes  over  it  with  five  lines.  What  it  meant  in  a 
foreign  land,  then  immeasurably  more  foreign  than 
to-day,  among  utter  strangers,  in  strange  surround 
ings,  alone,  we  can  imagine.  Four  days  after  her 
death,  with  her  last  words  in  his  ears,  "O  Henry, 
do  not  forget  me.  I  will  be  with  you  and  watch 
over  you,"  he  was  again  on  his  wanderings.  "All 
that  I  have  left  me,"  he  cried,  "is  the  memory  of 
her  goodness,  her  gentleness,  her  affection  for  me." 
Hardly  caring  what  he  did,  he  pushed  on  to  Heidel 
berg  as  he  had  planned,  and  tried  to  drown  his 
memory  in  work. 

Then  came  the  second  blow  even  as  it  had  come 
to  Novalis — the  death  of  his  brother-in-law,  his 
dearest  friend.  It  is  from  this  point  that  we  trace 
the  beginning  of  the  later  Longfellow.  He  was 
alone.  "Oh,  George,"  he  writes  to  his  friend 
Greene,  "what  have  I  not  suffered  during  the  last 
three  months,  and  I  have  no  friend  to  cheer  and 
console  me."  His  solitude,  his  brooding,  his  natural 
sentimentality  drove  him  in  upon  his  own  soul; 
the  image  of  his  lost  one  was  ever  before  him. 
"Hardly  a  day  passes,"  he  wrote  a  year  later,  "that 
some  face,  or  familiar  object,  or  some  passage  in 


218  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

the  book  I  am  reading,  does  not  call  up  the  image 
of  my  beloved  wife  so  vividly  that  I  pause  and  burst 
into  tears — and  sometimes  cannot  rally  again  for 
hours." 

Everything  was  turning  him  to  romanticism :  his 
naturally  subjective,  sentimental  temperament;  his 
mystic  tendencies,  heritage  of  all  descendants  of 
Puritans;  his  wrought  and  receptive  condition;  his 
utter  loneliness;  the  old  medieval  town  with  its 
castle  ruin;  the  romantic  nooks  and  groves  and 
legends ;  the  opening  springtime  with  all  its  German 
softness  and  beauty;  and,  above  all,  the  atmosphere 
of  romantic  poetry  that  was  shimmering  all  about 
him.  No  wonder  that  the  world  lost  its  sharp 
outlines ;  that  the  unseen  drew  nearer,  that  the  misty 
past  became  the  reality;  that  dreams  and  longings 
dominated  at  length  his  soul. 

The  life  of  the  poet  by  his  brother,  that  book  of 
strange  omissions,  is  almost  silent  here.  We  see 
little  of  the  processes  which,  during  those  months 
at  Heidelberg,  made  of  Longfellow  the  poet  that 
we  know.  The  biographer's  comment  implies  a 
copious  journal,  or,  at  least,  a  wealth  of  self -reveal 
ing  letters,  but  we  are  allowed  to  see  nothing,  though 
otherwise  it  is  impossible  fully  to  know  the  poet. 

We  do  know,  however,  that  during  the  winter  and 
spring  he  read  almost  incessantly,  and  that  his  favor 
ite  authors  were  from  that  earlier  school  which  even 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         219 

then  was  still  dominating  German  literature.  In 
Bonn,  we  know,  he  had  met  personally  the  venerable 
A.  W.  Schlegel,  and  had  conversed  with  him.  We 
know  that  he  read  fully  the  prose  of  Goethe,  Tieck, 
Hoffman,  and  Jean  Paul.  "Many  hours  were  spent 
in  solitary  rambles  in  the  neighboring  woods  .  .  . 
in  sketching  among  the  castle  ruins,  or  enjoying  the 
magnificent  views  from  its  terraces."  Under  the 
garden  trees  he  read  Herder.  Sitting  on  the  benches 
of  the  road  that  climbs  to  the  Wolfsbrunen,  Rich- 
ter's  "Kampaner  TJial  is  his  companion/'  "Hyper 
ion"  reveals  fully  the  nature  of  his  reading.  He 
was  familiar  with  Tiedge's  "Urania,"  Bettina  Ar- 
nim's  "Goethe's  Correspondence  with  a  Child,"  Ar- 
nim  and  Brentano's  "Boy's  Wonder-Horn,"  Nov- 
alis's  "Heinrich  von  Ofterdingen,"  Hoffmann's 
"Tales,"  Fichte's  "Destiny  of  Man,"  Schubert's 
"History  of  the  Soul,"  Goethe's  "Faust,"  Miiller's 
"Songs  of  a  Wandering  Horn  Player,"  Jean  Paul's 
"Titan,"  Uhland's  "Poems,"  Werner's  "Dramas," 
Tieck's  "Poems,"  Carove's  "Story  Without  an 
End,"  Salis  and  Matthisson's  "Lyrics."  These, 
save  some  few  casual  allusions,  are  all  the  writers 
mentioned  and  criticized  in  "Hyperion,"  and  it  is 
notable  that  with  the  single  exception  of  Goethe  they 
belong,  all  of  them,  to  the  romantic  group.  It  is  al 
most  a  roll-call  of  the  school. 

The  influences  that  were  shaping  the  new  poet  did 


220  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

not  end  with  the  months  at  Heidelberg.  The  lonely 
journey  into  Switzerland,  with  Uhland  in  his  pocket, 
the  meeting  with  Frances  Appleton  at  Interlaken, 
the  solitary  room  in  the  old  Cragie  House  at  Cam 
bridge,  the  continued  reading  of  Goethe,  Jean  Paul, 
Tieck,  Hoffmann,  the  brooding  and  dreaming  over 
"Hyperion" — the  three  years  from  that  November 
day  at  Rotterdam  were  the  crucible  from  which 
emerged  the  Longfellow  which  we  know.  "Most 
of  the  time  I  am  alone,"  he  writes  to  Greene  two 
years  after  his  return.  "I  want  to  travel.  Am  too 
excited,  too  tumultuous  inwardly  and  my  health 
suffers."  He  records  in  his  journal  September  8, 
1838:  "Moped  and  groped  about  unwell.  De 
jected — no  sunshine  in  the  soul."  His  college 
work  no  longer  inspired  him.  At  Bowdoin  he  had 
written:  "I  am  delighted  more  and  more  with 
the  profession  I  have  chosen.  ...  I  have  such  an 
engrossing  interest  in  the  studies  of  my  profession 
that  I  write  very  seldom  except  in  connection  with 
those  studies."  Now  he  complains  constantly  of 
interruptions,  of  having  his  mind  a  playmate  for 
boys.  "This  dragooning  of  schoolboys  in  lessons 
is  like  going  backward."  He  longs  for  the  even 
ing  hours  when,  with  no  one  to  disturb  him,  he  can 
read  and  write  and  dream  deliciously  of  the  world 
he  loves. 
To  get  the  full  meaning  of  this  period  in  Long- 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         221 

fellow's  life  we  have  only  to  read  "Hyperion," 
which  was  published  in  July,  1839.  The  events  of 
the  romance  may  be  "mostly  fictitious"  even  as  the 
author  declared  to  Greene ;  but  the  events  are*  the 
smallest  part  of  "Hyperion."  "It  contains  my 
cherished  thoughts  for  three  years,"  he  declared; 
he  might  have  said:  It  contains  my  naked  soul. 
The  shock,  the  brooding,  the  unutterable  longing 
and  heart-hunger,  the  vision  of*  angels,  the  minis 
try  of  night,  the  shadow-land  of  the  romantic  poets, 
the  new  love,  the  struggle  of  this  love  with  the 
specter  of  the  past — it  is  all  here. 

The  Longfellow  of  "Outre  Mer,"  and  the  Bow- 
doin  days  is  a  thing  of  the  far  past.  The  book  is 
a  German  book,  like  a  translation  of  one  of  those 
thousand  shoots  that  sprang  up  about  the  trunk  of 
"Wilhelm  Meister."  Even  the  conception  of  the 
book  is  German  and  romantic.  Holderlin  had  writ 
ten  the  first  "Hyperion,"  so  naming  it,  he  ex 
plains,  because  he  stood  "like  the  geese  flat-footed  in 
the  water  of  modernity,  impotently  endeavoring  to 
wing  his  flight  upward  toward  the  Greek  heaven." 
Like  all  the  Tieck-Richter  romances,  Longfellow's 
book  is  a  rambling,  chaotic  creation,  full  of  Jean 
Paul  interludes  and  digressions,  with  the  slender 
est  thread  of  plot,  and  without  climax  or  dramatic 
force.  In  every  way  is  it  typical  of  its  class. 
Everywhere  romance;  atmosphere  above  all:  "the 


222  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

mingling  of  daylight  and  starlight,"  "a  dreamy, 
yearning,  ideal  indistinctness."  We  can  visualize 
nothing.  The  heroine,  after  two  pages  of  descrip 
tion,  is  simply  voice  and  eyes.  It  is  a  book  written 
at  night  to  be  read  "the  evening  having  come  and  the 
tall  candles  being  lighted" — a  book  without  prede 
cessors  on  this  side  of  the  water,  an  exotic,  a  pale 
and  marvelous  night-moth  that  has  fluttered  over 
somehow  from  the  ruins  of  the  Old  World.  Every 
where  night  scenes  and  twilight.  The  plot  moves, 
when  it  moves  at  all,  from  moonlight  to  moonlight. 
To  get  its  atmosphere,  read  of  Emma  of  Ilmenau, 
who  shunned  "the  glare  of  daylight  and  society, 
and  wished  to  be  ailone.  Like  the  evening  prim 
rose,  her  heart  opened  only  after  sunset ;  but  bloomed 
through  the  dark  night  with  sweet  fragrance." 

Longfellow  wrote  the  book  with  a  purpose.  "It 
is  a  sincere  book,"  he  writes  Greene,  to  whom,  more 
than  to  any  one  else,  he  confides  his  inner  life, 
"showing  the  passage  of  a  morbid  mind  into  a  purer 
and  healthier  state."  To  find  what  this  morbid 
mind  was  we  have  only  to  read  the  chapter  en 
titled  "The  Fountain  of  Oblivion."  Here  the  stu 
dent  Hieronyntus,  who  has  suddenly  been  da.zzled 
by  the  beautiful  Hermione,  until,  like  one  who  has 
looked  at  the  sun,  he  can  see  nothing  else,  thinks 
to  drown  his  new  love  in  the  Fountain  of  Oblivion. 
As  he  stood  and  gazed  into  its  waters  "he  beheld 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         223 

far  down  in  their  silent  depths,  dim  and  ill-defined 
outlines,  waving  to  and  fro,  like  the  folds  of  a 
white  garment  in  the  twilight.  Then  more  dis 
tinct  and  permanent  shapes  arose — shapes  familiar 
to  his  mind,  yet  forgotten  and  remembered  again, 
as  the  fragments  of  a  dream;  till  at  length,  far,  far 
below  him,  he  beheld  the  great  City  of  the  Past, 
with  silent  marble  streets,  and  moss-grown  walls, 
and  spires  uprising  with  a  wave-like,  flickering  mo 
tion.  And  amid  the  crowd  that  thronged  those 
streets,  he  beheld  faces  once  familiar  and  dear  to 
him;  and  heard  sorrowful,  sweet  voices  singing,  O, 
forget  us  not!  forget  us  not!  and  then  the  distant 
mournful  sound  of  funeral  bells,  that  were  tolling 
below,  in  the  City  of  the  Past."  But  despite  this 
call  from  the  old  days  he  is  powerless  to  surrender 
his  new  love,  and  the  struggle  between  the  quick 
and  the  dead  goes  on.  Even*  at  the  close  nothing  is 
settled.  The  hero  does,  indeed,  during  the  last  few 
pages,  resolve  no  more  to  look  "mournfully  into 
the  past,"  uto  be  a  man  among  men,  and  np  longer 
a  dreamer  among  shadows,"  but  it  comes  as  a  swift 
impulse,  a  mere  mood.  The  book  shows  no  gradual 
growth  of  character,  no  steady  leading  up  to  this 
crisis.  There  is  effect,  but  no  cause.  There  can  be 
no  transformation  of  soul  at  the  mere  sight  of  an 
epitaph. 

All  through  this  period  we  find  evidences  of  a 


224  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

struggle  in  the  poet's  life — a  wrestling,  not  only 
with  the  new  love  that  confronted  the  jealous  past, 
but  with  the  moodiness,  the  aimlessness,  the  idle 
dreaming,  the  vain  regrets  which  had  begun  during 
those  solitary  months  at  Heidelberg.  His  Puritan 
conscience  and  the  teaching  of  the  later  Goethe  were 
protesting  against  mere  dreaming  and  moonlight 
and  lack  of  definite  aim.  That  Longfellow  was 
inclined  to  moodiness  and  dreaming,  with  a  ten 
dency  even  to  the  purposeless,  we  have  only  to  read 
his  journals  to  know.  He  was,  indeed,  the  Mr. 
Churchill  of  his  own  '"Kavanagh" — "a  dreamy, 
poetic  man."  "Life  presented  itself  to  him  like  the 
Sphynx,  with  its  perpetual  riddle  of  the  real  and 
the  ideal.  To  the  solution  of  this  dark  problem 
he  devoted  his  days  and  his  nights.  He  was  forced 
to  teach  grammar  when  he  would  have  written 
poems ;  and  from  day  to  day,  and  from  year  to  year, 
the  trivial  things  of  life  postponed  the  great  de 
signs,  which  he  felt  capable  of  accomplishing,  but 
never  had  the  resolute  courage  to  begin.  Thus  he 
dallied  with  his  thoughts  and  with  all  things,  and 
wasted  his  strength  in  trifles;  like  the  lazy  sea, 
that  plays  with  the  pebbles  on  the  beach."  And 
after  years  the  old  schoolmaster  had  done  nothing 
— "the  same  dreams,  the  same  longings,  the  same 
aspirations,  the  same  indecision  .  .  .  While  he 
mused  the  fire  burned  in  other  brains."  This  is  the 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow        225 

picture  of  the  true  romanticist,  of  a  Brentano  or 
a  Tieck — it  is  the  confession  of  a  weakness  of  the 
whole  school. 

Against  this  extreme  Longfellow  had  constantly 
to  struggle.  He  wrote  the  "Psalm  of  Life"  with 
the  same  quill  that  had  produced  that  penultimate 
chapter  of  "Hyperion,"  and  the  inspiration  of  both 
was  the  same.  He  first  made  public  the  poem  dur 
ing  a  lecture  on  Goethe — doubtless  to  illustrate  the 
spirit  of  "Wilhelm  Meister."  Goethe,  too,  had  had 
his  period  of  dreaming,  of  melancholy,  of  irresolu 
tion.  "That  the  life  of  man  is  but  a  dream,"  he  had 
written  in  "The  Sorrows  of  Werther,"  "has  come 
into  many  a  head ;  and  with  me,  too,  some  feeling  of 
that  sort  is  ever  at  work."  But  the  Goethe  of  the 
"Wilhelm  Meister"  period  is  another  man.  Life  is 
no  longer  a  dream,  but  a  place  for  work.  Be  self-re 
liant,  self- forgetful,  he  cries;  away  with  introspec 
tion  and  morbid  dreams; 

Life 's  no  resting,  but  a  moving ; 
Let  thy  life  be  deed  on  deed. 

He  could  say  now  to  the  Werther  of  his  youth: 

Once  more  then,  much-wept  shadow,  dost  thou  dare 

Boldly  to  face  the  day's  clear  light, 
To  meet  me  on  fresh  blooming  meadows  fair, 

And  dost  not  tremble  at  my  sight? 


226  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Act,  then,  as  I,  and  look  with  joyous  mind, 
The  moment  in  the  face ;  nor  linger  thou ! 

Meet  it  with  speed,  so  fraught  with  life,  so  kind 
In  action,  and  in  love  so  radiant  now. 

The  very  soul  of  "Wilhelm  Meister"  is  the  mes 
sage,  "art  is  long,  life  is  short,  judgment  difficult, 
opportunity  transient — therefore,  be  doing." 

Keep  not  standing  fixed  and  rooted; 

Briskly  venture,  briskly  roam! 
Head  and  hand,  where'er  thou  foot  it, 

And  stout  heart  are  still  at  home. 
In  each  land  the  sun  does  visit 

We  are  gay  whate'er  betide ; 
To  give  space  for  wandering,  is  it 

That  the  world  was  made  so  wide. 

The  message  came  to  Longfellow,  as,  indeed, 
it  had  come  to  all  Europe,  like  a  breath  from  the 
living  North.  Frederick  Schlegel  expressed  his 
belief  that  the  nineteenth  century  was  molded  by 
three  great  tendencies :  Fichte's  "Wissenschaf  s- 
lehre,"  Goethe's  "Wilhelm  Meister,"  and  the  French 
Revolution,  and  there  's  a  grain  of  truth  in  it. 

It  was  this  ringing  message  of  action,  of  stirring 
self-reliance,  this  challenge  of  the  aimlessness,  the 
idle  dreamings,  the  sentimentality  of  the  age,  that 
Longfellow  put  into  verse  for  his  own  soul  dis 
cipline.  His  first  intent  was  that  it  should  be  for 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         227 

no  eyes  but  his  own.  Read,  with  this  thought  in 
mind,  "The  Psalm  of  Life"  becomes  immediately 
significant.  There  is  no  haziness  about  even  the 
first  stanza,  though  it  has  been  said  that  a  prize  was 
once  offered  to  any  one  who  could  interpret  the 
stanza,  and  no  one  succeeded  in  winning  it.  The 
poem  is  everywhere  full  of  crudeness.  But  de 
spite  defects,  the  poem  marks  a  crisis  in  Longfellow's 
life,  and,  in  some  ways,  a  crisis  in  American  think 
ing.  This  is  the  substance  of  what  he  wrote : 

Life's  no  time  for  dreams;  the  soul  that  simply 
slumbers  and  dreams  is  not  living  at  all.  The 
world,  it  is  true,  seems  to  me  to  be  a  mere  shadow 
or  dream  even  as  it  did  to  Werther,  but  it  is  not 
— ("things  are  not  what  they  seem")  life  is  real. 
Art  is  long;  life  is  short — act;  look  the  moment  in 
the  face.  It  is  not  for  me  to  muse  idly  on  the 
future,  building  castles,  nor  to  be  the  slave  of  the 
past.  It  is  for  me  to  be  up  and  doing  to-day. 

It  was  the  first  real  breaking  of  the  spirit  of 
"Wilhelm  Meister"  on  our  shores,  and  it  quickened 
the  heart-beat  of  the  nation.  In  an  era  of  sen- 
timentalism,  of  Wertherism,  of  Byronism,  of  grave- 
yardism — Wendell  suggests  as  a  general  name  for 
Bryant's  works  "Glimpses  of  the  Grave" — it  came 
indeed  as  the  clash  of  steel.  No  wonder  it  gripped 
the  American  conscience,  even  as  it  had  stirred  Ger 
many  and  Europe. 


228  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

It  was  not  in  poetry,  however,  that  the  Long 
fellow  of  the  Heidelberg  era  sought  to  express 
himself  publicly.  Months  after  the  issue  of 
"Hyperion"  he  was  doubtful  as  to  his  work. 
"Meditating  what  I  shall  do  next.  Shall  it  be  two 
volumes  more  of  Hyperion,  or  a  drama  on  Cotton 
Mather?"  Poetry  he  had  reserved  for  expressing 
his  own  innermost  soul.  What  he  wrote  was  for 
no  other  eye.  The  earliest  stammer  of  his  new 
mood  he  had  written  during  that  first  solitary  win 
ter  at  Cambridge,  a  Novalisque  lyric  confided  a 
year  later  to  his  journal,  and  then,  later  still,  after 
the  startling  success  of  "The  Psalm  of  Life,"  given 
to  the  public  as  "The  Footsteps  of  Angels."  One 
cannot  understand  the  later  Longfellow  without  a 
study  of  this  earliest  of  his  lyrics.  I  shall  quote 
it  entire  in  its  earlier  version :  it  brings  us  nearer  to 
the  poet : 

When  the  hours  of  day  are  numbered, 
And  the  soul-like  voice  of  night 

Wakes  the  better  soul  that  slumbered 
To  a  holy  calm  delight; 

Ere  the  evening  lamps  are  lighted, 
And  like  specters  grim  and  tall, 

Shadows  from  the  fitful  firelight 
Dance  upon  the  parlor  wall, 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         229 

Then  the  forms  of  the  departed 

Enter  at  the  open  door ; 
The  belov'd  ones,  the  true-hearted 

Come  to  sit  with  me  once  more. 

And  with  them  the  being  beauteous 
Who  unto  my  youth  was  given, 

More  than  all  things  else  to  love  me, 
And  is  now  a  saint  in  heaven. 

With  a  slow  and  noiseless  footstep 

Comes  she  like  a  shape  divine, 
Takes  the  vacant  chair  beside  me, 

Lays  her  gentle  hand  in  mine. 

And  she  sits  and  gazes  at  me, 

With  her  deep  and  tender  eyes, 
Like  the  stars  so  still  and  saint-like, 

Looking  downward  from  the  skies. 

Here  we  have  the  soul  of  Novalis.  The  life  of 
the  night  has  become  the  only  real  life.  Day  is  the 
unreality;  the  "better  soul"  sleeps  until  the  twilight 
comes.  As  with  Novalis,  the  partitions  between  the 
material  and  the  spirit  world  have  all  but  vanished. 
Again  and  again  do  we  catch  this  note  in  Long 
fellow  : 

Have  I  dreamed  or  was  it  real 

What  I  saw  as  in  a  vision, 
When  to  marches  hymeneal 


230  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

In  the  land  of  the  ideal. 

Moved  my  thoughts  o'er  fields  Elysian? 

The  two  worlds  of  waking  and  of  dreaming,  of 
flesh  and  of  spirit,  lie  very  close  together  in  Long 
fellow's  poems.  There  is  no  need  to  give  a  list : 
"Haunted  Houses,"  "Song  of  the  Silent  Land," 
"The  Two  Angels,"  "The  Hlaunted  Chamber,"  "Auf 
Wiedersehen,"  are  enough  to  illustrate.  Years 
later,  after  his  early  romanticism  had-  become  modi 
fied  somewhat,  the  poet  could  still  say :  It  is  at  night 
that  the  better  life  begins;  the  day  is  the  time  for 
phantoms  and  ghosts,  not  the  night;  the  things  of 
day  are  trivial  and  commonplace,  and  without  the 
reality  of  night,  life  would  be  unendurable. 

Into  the  darkness  and  the  hush  of  night 
Slowly  the  landscape  sinks,  and  fades  away, 
And  with  it  fade  the  phantoms  of  the  day, 

The  ghosts  of  men  and  things,  that  haunt  the  light. 

The  crowd,  the  clamor,  the  pursuit,  the  flight. 
The  unprofitable  splendor  and  display, 
The  agitations  and  the  cares  that  prey 

Upon  our  hearts,  all  vanish  out  of  sight. 

The  better  life  begins;  the  world  no  more 

Molests  us ;  all  its  records  we  erase 
From  the  dull  commonplace  book  of  our  lives, 
That  like  a  palimpsest  is  written  o'er 

With  trivial  incidents  of  time  and  place, 
And,  lo !  the  ideal,  hidden  beneath,  revives. 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         231 

The  success  of  the  "Psalm  of  Life"  and  the  few 
lyrics  that  had  followed  it,  joined  with  the  impor 
tunities  of  his  friends,  induced  Longfellow,  late  in 
the  year  1839,  to  issue  a  collection  of  his  lyrics  and 
translations.  The  very  title,  "Voices  of  the  Night," 
is  significant.  It  was  two  books  in  one :  the  Bryant- 
esque  poems  and  the  translations  of  the  early  Long 
fellow,  and  the  psalms  and  translations  of  the  Heidel 
berg  mystic.  The  nine  original  poems  are  the  soul 
of  the  book,  and  they  are  shot  through  and  through 
with  the  softness  and  the  sentiment  of  German  ro 
manticism.  The  "Prologue,"  which  opens  the  col 
lection  with  a  bit  of  Tieck's  "Waldeinsamkeit," 
finds  the  poet  amid  the  shadows  of  a  solemn  and 
silent  wood,  dreaming  under  a  patriarchal  tree.  He 
determines  that  hereafter  his  songs  must  be  not  of 
the  external  and  the  objective,  things  of  the  daylight, 
but  of  the  world  within  him,  and  the  solemn  voices 
of  the  night.  In  the  next  poem  we  are  in  the  full 
current  of  romanticism:  "the  manifold,  soft  chimes 
that  fill  the  haunted  chambers  of  the  night";  "from 
the  cool  silence  of  the  midnight  air,  my  spirit  drank 
repose" ;  and 

O  holy  night,  from  thee  I  learn  to  bear 

What  man  has  borne  before; 
Thou  layest  thy  finger  on  the  lips  of  care 

And  they  complain  no  more. 

It  is  in  the  selfsame  key  as  Novalis's  "Hymns  to 


232  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

the  Night" :  "But  sacred  Night,  with  her  unspoken 
mysteries  draws  me  to  her  .  .  .  Dost  thou  not  feel 
pity  for  us,  O  holy  Night?  ...  My  whole  being 
awakes.  I  am  thine  and  thou  art  mine.  Night 
has  aroused  me  to  life  and  manhood."  It  is  a 
dominant  note  in  Longfellow:  "The  Light  of  the 
Stars,"  "The  Beleaguered  City,"  "I  Stood  on  the 
Bridge  at  Midnight,"  "The  Day  is  Done,"  "The 
Rainy  Day,"  "Daylight  and  Moonlight,"  "After 
noon  in  February,"  "Curfew,"  "The  Wind  Over  the 
Chimney" — their  spirit  pervades  like  an  atmosphere 
all  of  the  poet's  work. 

It  was  this  element  that  gave  to  Longfellow  his 
instant  popularity,  both  in  America  and  in  England. 
The  people  were  ready  for  the  "sadness  and  long 
ing,"  and  the  dreamy  mysticism  of  the  German 
school.  They  had  been  prepared  by  the  sentimental- 
ism  of  Byron  and  Moore,  by  the  medievalism  of 
Scott,  by  the  lacrymose  poets,  by  "The  Sorrows  of 
Werther."  Germany  had  had  no  small  influence  in 
molding  the  English  writings  of  the  early  century, 
but  it  had  been  the  Germany  of  Burger  and  the 
Sturm  und  Drang.  It  had  touched  Scott  and  Cole 
ridge  and  Byron,  but  none  of  them,  even  Coleridge, 
had  cared  much  for  Tieck.  The  work  of  the  Spatro- 
mantiker,  especially  the  softened  romance  of  Uh- 
land,  had  come  not  at  all  to  English  and  American 
readers.  It  was  brought  in  by  Longfellow  as  some- 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow          233 

thing  utterly  new.  Not  that  he  did  it  deliberately 
or  even  consciously.  He  brought  it  not  because  it 
had  appealed  to  his  fancy,  or  because  it  had  seemed 
a  pleasing  acquisition  to  display  to  his  countrymen, 
but  because  it  had  become  a  veritable  part  of  him 
self.  He  sang  it  even  as  Salis  and  Uhland  had 
done,  because  his  new  soul  had  had  in  Germany  its 
birth  and  its  beginning.  It  was  romanticism,  but 
it  was  far  removed  from  that  of  the  first  wild 
Frederick  Schlegel  type,  that  worshiped  the  moon, 
loved  its  neighbor's  wife,  and  joined  the  Catholic 
Church;  it  was  of  the  later  school — dreamy  and 
meditative,  full  of  delicious  sadness  and  longing, 
of  subdued  medievalism,  of  vagueness  and  hazy 
outline,  of  "old  forgotten,  far-off  things  and  battles 
long  ago" — in  a  word,  the  romanticism  of  Uhland. 
It  was  inevitable  that  the  poet  sooner  or  later 
should  have  essayed  the  ballad,  that  literary  form 
so  peculiarly  the  province  of  romanticism.  He  had 
read  Arnim  and  Brentano  with  eagerness.  "The 
boy's  'Wonder-Horn,'  "  he  exclaimed  in  "Hyper 
ion,"  "I  know  the  book  almost  by  heart.  Of  all 
your  German  books,  it  is  the  one  which  produces 
upon  my  imagination  the  most  wild  and  magic  in 
fluence.  I  have  a  passion  for  ballads.  .  .  .  They 
are  the  gypsy  children  of  song,  born  under  green 
hedge-rows,  in  the  leafy  lanes  and  by-paths  of  liter 
ature — in  the  genial  summertime." 


234  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Ballads,  indeed,  had  been  almost  his  first  thought 
when  he  looked  about  him  for  poetic  material  during 
that  first  period  at  Cambridge.  "The  Wreck  of  the 
Hesperus"  was  the  fifth  poem  that  he  wrote.  "I 
have  been  looking  at  the  old  northern  sagas,"  he 
confides  to  his  journal  in  1838,  "and  thinking  of  a 
series  of  ballads  or  a  romantic  poem  on  the  deeds 
of  the  first  bold  Viking  who  crossed  to  this  western 
world,  with  storm  spirits  and  devil  machinery  under 
water."  He  proposed  to  Hawthorne  that  they  col 
laborate  in  Arnim-Brentano  style  for  the  production 
of  a  collection  of  marvelous  fairy  tales  and  ballads 
for  boys. 

The  proposal  to  Hawthorne  was  evidently  an 
impulse.  Soon  after  we  find  Hawthorne  writing 
him,  "You  refuse  to  let  me  blow  a  blast  upon  the 
'Wonder  Horn/  Assuredly  you  have  a  right  to 
make  all  the  music  on  your  own  instrument;  but  I 
should  serve  you  right  were  I  to  set  up  an  opposition 
— for  instance,  with  a  cornstalk  fiddle  or  a  pumpkin- 
vine  trumpet."  Hawthorne's  threatened  trumpet 
gave  out  at  length  the  well-known  "Wonder  Book," 
and  Longfellow's  blast  was  the  "Ballads  and  other 
Poems"  of  1841. 

The  horn  rang  at  frequent  intervals  during  all 
the  rest  of  the  poet's  life.  "The  Norman  Baron," 
"Walter  von  der  Vogelweid,"  "The  Phantom  Ship," 
"The  Emperor's  Bird's  Nest,"  "Oliver  Basselin," 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow          235 

"Victor  Galbraith,"  "A  Ballad  of  the  Dutch  Fleet" 
— they  all  have  the  true  ballad  ring;  they  might  be 
translations  from  Uhland.  Their  charm  lies  in 
their  simplicity,  their  haunting  melody,  their  human 
interest,  their  dreamy  indistinctiveness,  their  echoes 
of  the  dim  past.  They  are  romantic  in  their  every 
line;  they  have  nothing  American  about  them. 
"The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus"  might  have  happened 
in  the  North  Sea,  and  Paul  Revere's  ride  with  a 
change  of  names  might  have  been  an  episode  of  the 
German  wars. 

What  Longfellow  was  after  the  publication  of 
this  second  volume  of  poems  he  remained.  His 
third  residence  in  Germany  in  1842  deepened  his 
romanticism,  but  it  did  not  modify  it.  He  had  dis 
covered  his  vocation.  The  sudden  and  widespread 
popularity  of  his  poetry  had  first  astonished  and 
then  sobered  him.  The  voice  of  the  people  was 
unmistakable,  and  it  was  like  a  call  from  on  high. 
No  more  prose;  life  was  poesy.  "I  have  been  giv 
ing  as  much  time  as  possible  to  the  young  poets," 
he  writes  from  Mariensberg.  He  had  found  Freili- 
grath  and  had  spent  many  delicious  days  with  him 
in  his  romantic  home  on  the  Rhine.  Young  Ger 
many  attracted  him  not  at  all;  he  was  of  Uhland 
and  the  Rhine,  not  of  Heine. 

He  came  home  to  write  "The  Belfry  of  Bruges" 
and  "Nuremberg,"  poems  breathing  romanticism 


236  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

from  every  line.  The  very  choice  of  Nuremberg 
as  the  subject  of  a  poem  is  enough  to  classify  the 
poet,  for  was  not  that  dreamy  old  city,  "that  pearl 
of  the  middle  ages,"  the  very  apotheosis  of  roman 
ticism?  When  Tieck  and  Wackenroder  traveled 
together  over  Germany,  they  had  entered  the  old 
town  in  a  sort  of  dream.  "In  a  species  of  aesthetic 
intoxication/'  says  Brandes,  "the  friends  wandered 
around  the  churches  and  the  graveyards ;  they  stood 
by  the  grave  of  Albert  Diirer  and  Kans  Sachs;  a 
vanished  world  arose  before  their  eyes,  and  the 
life  of  ancient  Nuremberg  became  to  them  the 
romance  of  art."  It  became  in  a  way  the  capital 
city  of  the  romantic  movement,  and  all  that  it  was 
to  those  early  dreamers  Longfellow  has  caught  in 
his  poem : 

Quaint  old  town  of  toil  and  traffic,  quaint  old  town  of 

art  and  song, 
Memories  haunt  thy  pointed  gables,  like  the  rooks  that 

round  them  throng: 

Memories  of  the  Middle  Ages,  when  the  emperors, 
rough  and  bold, 

Had  their  dwelling  in  thy  castle,  time-defying,  cen 
turies  old. 

Vanished  is  the  ancient  splendor,  and  before  my 
dreamy  eye 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         237 

Wave  those  mingled  shapes  and  figures,  like  a  faded 
tapestry. 

Not  thy  councils,  not  thy  Kaisers,  win  for  thee  the 

world's  regard; 
But  thy  painter,  Albrecht  Diirer,  and  Hans  Sachs,  thy 

cobbler  bard. 

This  yearning  for  the  ideal,  this  turning  away 
from  the  commonplace  present  to  the  vague  medie 
val  world  where  fancy  and  the  imagination  may 
foot  it  free,  is  the  very  life  of  romanticism.  But 
the  later  German  school  softened  its  pictures  of 
the  Middle  Ages.  It  delighted  in  sentimental  mus 
ings  amid  the  ruins,  in  pathetic  legend,  in  dreamy 
pictures  of  monks  and  harpers  and  knights  and 
radiant  maidens  with  soft  blue  eyes.  Heine,  the 
harshest  critic  of  the  school,  declared  that  in  Uh- 
land's  writings  "the  naive,  rude,  powerful  tones  of 
the  Middle  Ages  are  not  reproduced  with  idealized 
fidelity,  but  rather  they  are  dissolved  into  a  sickly, 
sentimental  melancholy."  Nearly  half  of  Long 
fellow's  poems  are  medieval  in  background,  and  it 
is  the  medievalism  of  Uhland.  In  work  like  "The 
Golden  Legend,"  an  adaption  of  "Der  Arme  Hein- 
rich,"  he  is  at  his  best.  Its  atmosphere  from 
beginning  to  end  is  that  which  plays  over  all  of 
his  most  characteristic  work ;  soft  melancholy,  vague 
yearnings,  feeling  above  everything.  To  G.  P.  R. 


238  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

James  the  poem  resembled  "an  old  ruin  with  the 
ivy  and  the  rich  blue  mold  upon  it."  It  is  rather 
the  dream  of  a  monk  over  his  rubrics. 

It  is  but  natural  that  the  Romish  Church  with 
its  traditions  and  its  impressive  ceremonials  and 
institutions  should  appeal  strongly  to  the  poet,  as 
it  did  to  all  of  his  school.  He  drew  upon  it  con 
stantly  for  his  imagery  and  his  epithets:  "the  owl 
is  a  grave  bird,  a  monk,  who  chants  midnight  mass 
in  the  great  temple  of  nature" ;  the  old  clock  on  the 
stairs  is  also  "a  monk,  who  crosses  himself  and 
sighs,  Alas." 

The  winds  like  anthems  roll; 
They  are  chanting  solemn  masses, 
Singing,  "Pray  for  this  poor  soul, 
Pray,  pray  P 

And  the  hooded  clouds,  like  friars, 
Tell  their  beads  in  drops  of  rain, 

And  patter  their  doleful  prayers; 
But  their  prayers  are  all  in  vain, 
All  in  vain ! 

Indeed  to  read  the  poet  is  like  entering  some 
ancient  Gothic  cathedral  with  its  subdued  light,  its 
half-crumbled  monuments  of  crusaders,  its  softly 
murmuring  organ,  its  shuddery  vaults  with  the 
bones  of  maidens,  its  slow  procession  of  chanting 
monks,  its  coolness  and  its  mystery. 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         239 

Touch  Longfellow  where  you  will  and  you  will 
find  German  romance.  It  shows  itself  in  his 
devotion  to  Dante,  that  mystic  of  mystics,  that 
"spokesman  of  the  Middle  Ages." 

I  enter  and  I  see  thee  in  the  gloom 

Of  the  long  aisles,  O  poet  Saturnine ! 

And  strive  to  make  my  steps  keep  pace  with  thine. 
The  air  is  filled  with  some  unknown  perfume, 
The  congregation  of  the  dead  make  room 

For  thee  to  pass ;  the  votive  tapers  shine ; 

Like  rooks  that  haunt  Ravenna's  groves  of  pine 
The  hovering  echoes  fly  from  tomb  to  tomb. 
From  the  confessionals  I  hear  arise 

Rehearsals  of  forgotten  tragedies 

And  lamentations  from  the  crypts  below; 
And  then  a  voice  celestial  that  begins 
With  the  pathetic  words,  "Although  your  sins 

As  scarlet  be,"  and  ends  with  "as  the  snow." 

It  shows  itself  in  his  Fichte-drawn  message  of 
consolation:  be  resigned,  all  is  Providence.  It 
shows  itself  in  his  choice  of  material. 

"The  romantic  school,"  says  Beers,  "sought  to 
reinforce  its  native  stock  of  materials  by  motifs 
drawn  from  foreign  literatures,  and  particularly 
from  Norse  mythology  and  from  Spanish  romance." 
In  his  passion  for  Northern  myth  Longfellow  sur 
passed  even  Schlegel  and  Uhland.  His  translations 
and  adaptations  and  above  all  his  "Hiawatha," 


240  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

that  "Indian  edda"  as  he  called  it,  that  poem  which 
gives  not  only  the  meter  but  the  very  atmosphere 
and  soul  of  the  Finnish  "Kalevala,"  attest  this. 
For  his  fondness  for  Spanish  romance  one  has  only 
to  read  his  earliest  drama. 

Romanticism  is  only  another  name  for  youth  and 
aspiration.  With  the  middle  years  of  life  the  col 
ors  fade;  the  vague  melancholy  which  somehow  is 
inseparable  from  young  manhood  is  forgotten; 
experience  disciplines  the  imagination;  life  takes  on 
more  restrained  and  sober  moods.  Uhland  ceased 
to  sing  long  before  middle  life;  Heine  was  a 
romanticist  only  during  his  early  years.  Longfel 
low's  distinctively  romantic  period  was  over  before 
1849.  It  was  then  that  he  began  to  think  of  the 
larger  art,  and  to  plan  a  "tower  of  song  with  lofty 
parapet." 

'But  it  is  not  the  work  of  this  latter  period,  tinged 
with  romanticism  even  as  it  is,  that  stands  to-day 
in  the  popular  mind  as  Longfellow.  It  is  the  little 
handful  of  lyrics  written  near  the  year  1840  that 
the  world  at  large  now  associates  with  his  name. 
The  dramas,  the  later  lyrics,  the  "Christus,"  even 
the  "Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,"  are  unknown  to  the 
man  in  the  street,  but  he  knows  "The  Psalm  of 
Life"  and  "The  Bridge."  A  college  class  of  two 
hundred  men,  asked  recently  to  write  without  prep 
aration  each  a  list  of  the  poems  of  Longfellow, 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         241 

handed  in  altogether  only  thirty  titles,  and  these  in 
the  order  of  frequency  of  mention  were:  "Evangel- 
ine,"  "Hiawatha,"  "Miles  Standish,"  "The  Village 
Blacksmith,"  'The  Psalm  of  Life,"  'The  Children's 
Hour,"  "Paul  Revere's  Ride,"  'The  Building  of 
the  Ship,"  "The  Day  is  Done,"  'The  Bridge,"  "The 
Skeleton  in  Armor,"  "The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus," 
"The  Old  Clock  on  the  Stairs,"  "The  Rainy  Day," 
"Excelsior,"  "The  Reaper  and  the  Flowers,"  "The 
Footsteps  of  Angels,"  "The  Arrow  and  the  Song," 
"Resignation,"  "The  Arsenal  at  Springfield,"  and 
"Maidenhood."  The  rest  were  scattering.  Of  this 
list  only  "Hiawatha,"  "Miles  Standish,"  "The 
Children's  Hour,"  and  "Paul  Revere's  Ride"  were 
written  after  1849.  The  list  is  suggestive.  This 
is  Longfellow  as  the  people  know  him,  but  this  is 
also  the  Longfellow  of  the  Heidelberg  vision — the 
Longfellow  of  unchecked  German  romance.  It 
was  this  element  that  gave  him  his  popularity.  The 
age  was  revolting  against  sentimentalism,  but  it 
caught  eagerly  at  the  new  tone  of  soft  melancholy, 
of  melodious  pathos,  of  idealized  antiquity,  of  genre 
art,  of  mysticism  subdued  by  Goethe;  in  a  word,  it 
caught  eagerly  at  German  romanticism  for  the  first 
time  whispering  its  haunting  music  in  English  ears. 
Longfellow  was  distinctively  a  lyrist.  Although 
half  of  all  his  original  poetry  is  in  dramatic  form, 
he  was  as  far  from  being  a  dramatist  as  was  Uh- 


242  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

land,  who  also  wrote  dramas.  The  drama  requires 
action,  plot,  absolute  definiteness :  distinctness  first 
of  all.  There  must  be  evolution  of  character, 
cause  and  effect,  a  steady  and  irresistible  march  of 
events  toward  the  final  culmination.  It  must  deal, 
too,  with  intensely  individualized  figures  that  stand 
out  objectively  against  a  background  that  does  not 
dominate  or  distract.  But  Longfellow  was  first 
of  all  subjective;  he  saw  through  the  lens  of  his 
own  soul — shadowy  ethereal  beings;  he  could  tell 
of  his  own  emotions  and  aspirations  and  longings, 
but  he  was  powerless,  like  all  of  the  romantic  poets, 
to  view  life  objectively,  to  paint  sharp  outlines,  to 
work  step  by  step  to  an  inevitable  climax. 

He  came  the  nearest  to  the  dramatic  in  "The 
Spanish  Student,"  but  even  this  is  essentially  lyric. 
It  is  a  young  man's  dream,  full  of  romantic  senti 
ment,  of  effects  without  cause,  of  vague  characteri 
zation;  charming  situations  rather  than  dramatic 
development.  To  quote  a  criticism  on  Tieck,  "all 
its  author's  care  is  lavished  upon  what  he  calls  the 
climate  of  events,  their  atmosphere  and  fragrance, 
tone  and  color,  the  mood  they  inspired,  the  shadow 
they  cast,  the  light  in  which  they  are  seen,  which 
is  invariably  that  of  the  moon."  Longfellow's 
poetic  works  fill  nine  volumes,  yet  if  his  lyrics  were 
published  alone  they  would  fill  scarce  one,  a  remark 
able  fact  when  we  consider  that  he  was  a  lyrist  only, 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         248 

a  lyrist  as  preeminently  as  was  Salis  or  Ronsard. 
He  is  at  his  best  only  in  the  poetry  of  moments, 
of  moods,  of  the  individual  soul.  And  of  all  his 
lyrics  the  most  spontaneous  and  genuine  are  his 
sonnets,  the  work  almost  wholly  of  his  later  years ; 
and  it  is  because  they  welled  from  his  own  heart 
and  are  not,  like  so  much  that  he  wrote,  "poetry  to 
the  second  power" — poetry  about  poetry. 

Longfellow,  then,  was  a  lyrist  of  the  German 
romantic  school.  Like  Uhland,  he  felt  rather  than 
saw. 

Hawthorne  could  not  use  the  material  for  "Evan- 
geline" ;  it  was  too  vague  and  dispersive  to  grip  his 
imagination.  To  Longfellow  it  was  simply  pathos ; 
he  could  feel  it  and  that  was  enough.  He  never 
visited  the  Grand  Pre  region,  or  the  Mississippi,  or 
the  Falls  of  Minnehaha;  there  was  no  need  of  it. 
Holderlin  had  never  visited  Greece  before  he  wrote 
his  "Hyperion"  with  chapter  after  chapter  of 
description.  To  have  made  the  visit  might  have 
spoiled  the  picture.  Realism,  truth  to  actual  exter 
nals,  even  to  the  historical  facts  in  the  case, 
amounted  to  little  in  Longfellow's  scheme.  It  was 
the  atmosphere  and  the  feeling  that  counted.  He 
cared  only  to  call  up  the  mdrchenwelt  with  the 
golden  mist  over  it,  with  its  delicious  sadness,  and 
its  pathetic  human  figure  dimly  seen,  and  the  result 
is  a  book  that  has  been  wept  over  by  two  generations 


244  'Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

of  schoolgirls.  The  heroine,  Evangeline,  is  a  mere 
abstraction  impossible  to  visualize.  Heine  declared 
that  "the  women  in  Uhland's  poems  are  only 
beautiful  shadows,  embodied  moonshine."  "French 
romanticism,'*  says  Brandes,  "produces  clearly 
defined  figures;  the  ideal  of  German  romanticism  is 
not  a  figure  but  a  melody,  not  definite  form  but 
indefinite  aspiration."  Evangeline  is  a  feminine 
Heinrich  von  Ofterdingen,  seeking  the  world  over 
for  the  blue  flower,  and  losing  it  in  the  end  just 
when  it  seemed  in  her  grasp. 

And  it  is  so  of  "Hiawatha/'  It  is  romantic 
through  and  through,  unreal  even  to  ghostliness, 
touching  the  actual  world  only  here  and  there.  Its 
atmosphere  and  its  melody  are  everything:  moon 
light,  starlight,  romantic  love,  the  days  that  are 
forgotten,  and  over  all  sentiment  and  pathos.  The 
Indians  are  in  reality  monks  and  medieval  knights 
and  first  cousins  to  the  gods  of  Northern  mythology. 

Downward  through  the  evening  twilight 

In  the  days  that  are  forgotten, 

In  the  unremembered  ages, 

From  the  full  moon  fell  Nokomis, 

Fell  the  beautiful  Nokomis, 

She  a  wife,  but  not  a  mother. 

Downward  through  the  evening  twilight 
On  the  Muskoday,  the  meadow, 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         245 

On  the  prairie  full  of  blossoms. 
"See !  a  star  falls !"  said  the  people. 
From  the  sky  a  star  is  falling. 

There  among  the  ferns  and  mosses 
There  among  the  prairie  lilies 
On  the  Muskoday,  the  meadow, 
In  the  moonlight  and  the  starlight 
Fair  Nokomis  bore  a  daughter, 
And  she  called  her  name  Wenonah, 
As  the  first-born  of  her  daughters. 
And  the  daughter  of  Nokomis 
Grew  up  like  the  prairie  lilies, 
Grew  a  tall  and  slender  maiden, 
With  the  beauty  of  the  moonlight 
With  the  beauty  of  the  starlight. 

A  vague  dream  it  is  of  fairy-land,  of  monsters  and 
marvels,  the  fancies  of  a  childlike  people;  and  its 
main  charm  is  "the  moonlight  and  the  starlight," 
the  soft  Indian  summer  that  envelops  it  like  a  haze. 
But  as  Ibsen  said  of  Schiller's  "JunS^rau>"  "there 
is  no  experience  in  it.  It  is  not  the  result  of  power 
ful  personal  impressions,  but  is  a  composition." 
And  this  brings  us  to  the  main  criticism  that  must 
be  made  of  all  the  romantic  school :  their  work  is  the 
result  of  conscious  intention.  The  Sturm  und 
Drang  of  a  literature  is  expulsive,  creative,  uncon 
scious.  The  poet  like  Burger  and  Burns  and  Whit- 
tier  sings  because  he  must,  but  the  romancers,  as 


246  'Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Goethe  has  well  expressed  it,  live  "in  a  period  of 
forced  talent."  All  but  a  few  of  Longfellow's 
early  "psalms,"  and  sonnets,  were  written  with 
books  face-down  about  his  writing-pad.  He  prized 
translation  since  it  acted  as  a  stimulant.  "It  stirs 
up  germs  of  thought."  Imagine  Burns  or  Burger 
or  Keats  saying  this.  As  a  result  his  work  "in 
duces,"  as  Emerson  expressed  it,  "a  serene  mood." 
Seldom  do  we  feel  the  heart  beat  faster  and  sud 
denly  hold  our  breaths  as  we  catch  glimpses  of  new 
worlds.  All  is  melodious  and  serene,  in  an  atmos 
phere  of  delicious  twilight,  and  the  atmosphere  and 
the  melody  are  everything. 

His  poetry  is  really  American  only  in  its  themes. 
He  cared  little  for  the  prosaic,  bustling  life  of  his 
native  land;  his  heart  was  elsewhere.  None  of 
our  writers  traveled  so  little  in  their  own  country; 
aside  from  one  trip  to  Washington  he  never  got 
further  west  than  New  York.  He  looked  east 
ward  rather  than  westward;  the  study  in  the  old 
Craigie  House  had  only  eastern  windows.  The 
burning  problems,  the  fiery  struggle  of  the  for 
ties  and  fifties  really  bored  him  at  times.  "Dined 
with  Agassiz  to  meet  Emerson  and  others,"  he 
writes  in  his  journal  in  that  tumultous  year  1856. 
"I  was  amused  an-d  annoyed  to  see  how  soon  the 
conversation  drifted  off  into  politics.  It  was  not 
till  after  dinner  in  the  library,  that  we  got  upon  any- 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         247 

thing  really  interesting.''  It  is  like  Dumas's  turn 
ing  from  the  subject  of  tailors'  bills  and  rents  and 
the  cost  of  living  to  that  of  romance  with  the  re 
mark,  "Let  us  now  turn  to  real  life."  With  Sum- 
ner,  that  flame  of  fire,  for  his  bosom  friend,  it  was 
impossible  for  the  poet  to  be  wholly  indifferent  to 
passing  events;  he  could  even  write  a  few  grace 
ful  and  colorless  lyrics  on  slavery  that  are  to 
Whittier's  as  water  to  aqua  regia,  yet  he  seems 
never  to  have  caught  the  full  thrill  and  meaning 
of  the  land  and  the  age  in  which  his  life  had  been 
cast.  He  remained  to  the  last  the  gentle,  lovable 
monkish  scholar,  content  with  his  friends  and  his 
dreams  of  olden  times,  oblivious  of  the  fact  that  a 
mighty  epic  was  enacting  at  his  very  door. 

He  is  our  Jean  Paul,  "the  beloved,"  with  his 
cheery  optimism,  his  belief  in  the  worth  of  the  in 
dividual,  his  genre  pictures,  his  soft  dreamy  idyls, 
his  Fichte  message  of  resignation,  and  he  is  our 
Uhland  with  his  half-lights,  his  softened  mysticism, 
his  medieval  atmosphere,  his  serene  level  of  ex 
cellence.  Whether  or  not  his  great  influence  upon 
the  common  people  at  the  moment  when  they  were  at 
their  most  receptive  stage  was  altogether  good,  is 
open  to  question.  When  America  like  a  schoolgirl 
was  hungry  for  culture  and  for  poetry,  Longfellow 
gave  German  romance  and  he  gave  little  else.  He 
came  at  the  only  moment  in  our  history  when  he 


248  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

could  have  had  a  full  hearing,  or  at  least  at  the 
only  moment  when  he  could  have  been  given  the 
leading  place  to  the  exclusion  of  all  others.  His 
enormous  popularity,  his  contagious  sentimental- 
ism,  his  breath  of  the  Old  World  at  this  moment 
when  America  was  peculiarly  susceptible — all  this, 
coming  at  the  moment  when  a  new  group  of  poets 
was  gathering,  cast  a  shadow  over  a  whole  period 
of  our  poetic  history.  To  Longfellow  more  than 
to  any  other  cause  may  be  traced  the  general  lack 
of  stamina  in  American  poetry  during  two  genera 
tions  of  poets. 

But  it  is  vain  to  criticize;  whatever  we  may  say, 
Longfellow's  place  is  secure.  He  will  be  our  beloved 
poet,  just  as  Uhland  and  Jean  Paul  are  beloved. 
His  lyrics  of  consolation  will  still  console  the 
feminine  heart  though  they  contain  only  Fichte  set 
to  melody  and  moonlight.  But  his  influence  upon 
the  future  cannot  be  a  large  one.  America  and  the 
world  have  outgrown  German  romanticism.  Lowell 
wrote  young  Howells :  "You  must  sweat  the  Heine 
out  of  you  as  men  do  mercury" ;  the  young  poet  of 
the  new  century  must  sweat  out  Longfellow.  We 
demand  to-day  not  vagueness  but  sharpness  of  out 
line.  Whitman  is  our  prophet  of  to-day,  and  his 
influence  is  spreading  and  deepening.  Full  and 
clear  comes  the  demand:  Show  us  life;  tell  us 
the  truth  of  life  in  the  concrete,  in  words  that  bite 


The  Shadow  of  Longfellow         249 

and  burn.  The  office  of  the  poet  no  longer  is 
merely  to  please,  or  to  induce  a  serene  mood.  Mere 
fancy  and  prettiness,  mere  conceits  and  melody, 
mere  atmosphere,  mere  traditions  soft  with  the  years, 
and  longings  and  dreamings  no  longer  satisfy.  The 
poet  is  the  seer :  it  is  for  him  to  look  beyond  the 
day  and  the  year;  to  voice  the  truth  of  our  own 
times,  of  our  own  selves,  of  our  native  land,  and  of 
the  years  that  are  yet  to  be. 


THE  MODERNNESS  OF  PHILIP 
FRENEAU 


IT  is  food  for  thought  that  the  late  war,  by  all 
confessed  the  most  perfect  masterpiece  of  Mars, 
must  pass  into  record  as  the  war  that  produced  no 
poetry.  A  few  sporadic  lyrics  here  and  there,  but 
how  many  poems  may  one  mention  from  memory 
without  consulting  the  collections  of  war  verse? 
And  yet  the  lives  of  empires,  the  greatest  and  oldest 
in  Europe,  trembled  for  years  in  the  balance,  armies 
with  their  backs  to  the  last  wall  fought  for  the 
very  life  of  their  country,  and  deeds  of  heroism  were 
done  by  millions.  Never  has  there  been  such  need 
for  "Marseillaise"  rouses,  for  soul-kindling  battle- 
hymns,  for  blood-stirring  hero  ballads,  for  thren 
odies  and  laments  at  the  open  graves  of  martyrs  of 
freedom,  for  interpretations  of  the  souls  of  nations, 
for  psalms  of  comfort,  or  of  faith,  or  of  exultation. 

Especially  has  this  been  true  of  America.  Is 
democracy  worth  giving  one's  life  for  if  it  cannot 
be  sung?  Is  the  American  ideal  worth  holding 

250 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  251 

up  for  the  world  if  it  is  not  so  tremendous  a  thing 
that  only  poetry  can  voice  it  ?  We  were  silent,  and 
yet  no  nation  ever  had  theme  more  poetic ;  no  nation 
ever  entered  war  on  higher  grounds  and  no  nation 
ever  had  its  imagination  stirred  by  a  tradition  more 
romantic.  When  America  sent  her  young  men  to 
France  she  sent  them  on  a  crusade.  Every  one  of 
them  as  his  feet  pressed  the  soil  on  which  perhaps 
he  was  to  shed  his  blood  could  say  in  his  heart, 
"Lafayette,  we  are  here."  We  need  not  expand  the 
thought.  No  poet  ever  had  a  more  stirring  theme. 
But  who  is  the  laureate  of  "France  allied"?  He 
is  still  Philip  Freneau,  dead  ninety  years ;  with  Walt 
Whitman,  the  single  American  voice  of  1871 — "O 
Star  of  France" — in  the  second  place.  Whom  will 
one  name  as  the  third?  We  are  inclined  to  speak 
apologetically  of  Freneau  if  we  ever  speak  of  him 
at  all.  He  wrote  too  much,  he  mingled  with  a  little 
undoubted  poetry  a  dreary  mass  of  trash;  it  is 
easy  to  dismiss  him  with  faint  praise:  he  lived  in 
the  twilight  of  our  poetry,  and  he  wrote  as  best 
he  could  without  readers,  or  adequate  criticism, 
without  poetic  companions  and  without  reward. 
And  yet  for  our  richest  output  in  many  areas  of  our 
poetry  we  still  must  return  to  him.  Would  that 
he  had  been  alive  and  at  the  height  of  his  powers 
when  the  German  armies  in  1914  swept  through 
Belgium  and  down  into  France!  His  songs  of 


252  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

"France  allied"  should  have  been  gathered  at  the 
opening  of  the  war  and  sent  broadcast  over  America. 
It  was  the  conviction  of  Freneau  that  the  French 
Revolution,  that  struggle  that  ended  in  1918  with 
the  fall  of  the  kaiser  and  the  czar,  began  in  the 
free  forests  of  America.  He  voiced  it  again  and 
again.  In  1791  this  was  his  exulting  cry: 

From  the  spark  that  we  kindled,  a  flame  has  gone  forth 
To  astonish  the  world  and  enlighten  mankind: 
With  a  code  of  new  doctrines  the  universe  rings, 
And  Paine  is  addressing  strange  sermons  to  kings. 

Had  he  lived  in  August,  1914,  this,  from  his  "On 
the  Fourteenth  of  July,  1792,"  would  have  been 
the  type  of  his  war-cry,  his  challenge  to  the  Hun, 
his  exultant  toast : 

By  traitors  driven  to  ruin's  brink 
Fair  Freedom  dreads  united  knaves. 
The  world  must  fall  if  she  must  bleed; 
And  yet,  by  heaven !  I  'm  proud  to  think 
The  world  was  ne'er  subdued  by  slaves — 
Nor  shall  the  hireling  herd  succeed. 

Boy!  fill  the  generous  goblet  high; 
Success  to  France  shall  be  the  toast: 
The  fall  of  kings  the  fates  foredoom, 
The  crown  decays,  its  splendours  die. 

In  December  we  find  him  pouring  forth  his  fiery 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  253 

"On  the  Demolition  of  the  French  Monarchy."  It 
has  a  singularly  modern  ring.  Thus  might  he  have 
described  the  first  Battle  of  the  Marne : 

The  Gaul,  enrag'd  as  they  retire, 

Hurls  at  their  heads  his  blaze  of  fire — 

What  hosts  of  Frederick's  reeking  crew; 

Dying,  have  bid  the  world  adieu, 

To  dogs  their  flesh  been  thrown ! 

Escap'd  from  death,  a  mangled  train 

In  scatter'd  bands  retreat: 

Where,  bounding  on  Silesia's  plain, 

The  Despot  holds  his  seat; 

With  feeble  step,  I  see  them  go 

The  heavy  news  to  tell 

Where  Oder's  lazy  waters  flow, 

Or  glides  the  swift  Moselle. 

In  a  foot-note  Freneau  explained  that  "the  Despot" 
was  "the  Monarch  of  Prussia."  And  the  poem 
closes  with  what  is  half  a  prophecy: 

O  France !  the  world  to  thee  must  owe 

A  debt  they  ne'er  can  pay: 

The  Rights  of  Man  you  bid  them  know, 

And  kindle  Reason's  day ! 

Columbia,  in  your  friendship  blest, 

Your  gallant  deeds  shall  hail — 

On  the  same  ground  our  fortunes  rest, 

Must  flourish,  or  must  fail : 

But — should  all  Europe's  slaves  combine 


254  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Against  a  cause  so  fair  as  thine, 
And  Asia  aid  a  league  so  base — 
Defeat  would  all  their  aims  disgrace, 
And  Liberty  prevail! 

And  with  true  bardic  rapture  he  peers  into  the 
future,  even  to  our  own  day,  perhaps;  this  is  what 
he  sees : 

I  see  them  spurn  old  laws, 
Indignant,  burst  the  Austrian  yoke, 
And  clip  the  Eagle's  claws : 
From  shore  to  shore,  from  sea  to  sea 
They  join,  to  set  the  wretched  free, 
And,  driving  from  the  servile  court 
Each  titled  slave — they  help  support 
The  Democratic  Cause! 

Again  in  a  foot-note  Freneau  explains:  by  "the 
Eagle,"  he  says,  he  means  "the  imperial  standard  of 
Germany." 

Again  and  again  as  the  war  progresses  he  cries 
out  in  exultation,  or  urges  on  the  battling  hosts 
of  freedom,  as  in  "On  the  Portraits  of  Louis  and 
Antoinette  in  the  Senate  Chamber,"  in  the  ringing 
lines  of  "On  the  French  Republicans" : 

Americans!  when  in  your  country's  cause 
You  march'd,  and  dar'd  the  English  lion's  jaws, 
Crush'd  Hessian  slaves,  and  made  their  hosts  retreat, 
Say,  were  you  not  Republican — complete? 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  255 

Friends  to  Republics,  cross  the  Atlantic  brine, 
Low  in  the  dust  see  regal  splendour  laid: 
Hopeless  forever  sleeps  the  Bourbon  line. 

In  "To  a  Republican  with  Mr.  Paine's  Rights  of 
Man,"  he  sketches  the  duty  of  the  American  republic : 

Be  ours  the  task  the  ambitious  to  restrain, 
And  this  great  lesson  teach — that  kings  are  vain ; 
That  warring  realms  to  certain  ruin  haste, 
That  kings  subsist  by  war,  and  wars  are  waste: 
So  shall  our  nation,  form'd  on  Virtue's  plan, 
Remain  the  guardian  of  the  Rights  of  Man, 
A  vast  Republic,  fam'd  through  every  clime, 
Without  a  king,  to  see  the  end  of  time. 

At  the  civic  feast  given  Citizen  Genet  in  Phila 
delphia,  May  18,  1/93,  Freneau  was  ordered  to 
translate  Citizen  Pichon's  impassioned  "Ode  a 
la  Liberte,"  and  after  the  seventh  toast  there  was 
sung  "with  great  effect,"  according  to  Bache's  "Au 
rora,"  Freneau's  "Ode,"  though  Conway,  in  his 
life  of  Paine,  mentions  that  it  had  been  sung  in  1791 
at  the  November  festival  of  the  London  Revolution 
ary  Society.  The  ode  unquestionably  is  Freneau's, 
since  he  included  it  in  the  1795  edition  of  his  poems. 
It  should  be  included  in  every  collection  of  our  na 
tional  hymns : 

God  save  the  Rights  of  Man! 
Give  us  a  heart  to  scan 


256  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Blessings  so  dear; 
Let  them  be  spread  around 
Wherever  man  is  found, 
And  with  the  welcome  sound 
Ravish  his  ear. 

Let  us  with  France  agree, 

And  bid  the  world  be  free, 

While  tyrants  fall ! 

Let  the  rude  savage  host 

Of  their  vast  numbers  boast — * 

Freedom's  almighty  trust 

Laughs  at  them  all ! 

Though  hosts  of  slaves  conspire 
To  quench  fair  Gallia's  fire, 
Still  shall  they  fail : 
Though  traitors  round  her  rise, 
Leagu'd  with  her  enemies, 
To  war  each  patriot  flies, 
And  will  prevail. 

No  more  is  valor's  flame 
Devoted  to  a  name, 
Taught  to  adore — 
Soldiers  of  Liberty 
Disdain  to  bow  the  knee, 
But  teach  Equality 
To  every  shore. 

The  world  at  last  will  join 
To  aid  thy  grand  design, 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  257 

Dear  Liberty! 
To  Russia's  frozen  lands 
The  generous  flame  expands : 
On  Afric's  burning  sands 
Shall  man  be  free ! 

In  this  our  western  world 
Be  Freedom's  flag  unfurl'd 
Through  all  its  shores ! 
May  no  destructive  blast 
Our  heaven  of  joy  o'ercast, 
May  Freedom's  fabric  last 
While  time  endures. 

If  e'er  her  cause  require! — ? 
Should  tyrants  e'er  aspire 
To  aim  their  stroke, 
May  no  proud  despot  daunt—* 
Should  he  his  standard  plant, 
Freedom  will  never  want 
Her  hearts  of  oak! 


Certainly  had  Freneau  been  alive  in  1914  he 
would  have  joined  with  all  his  powers  those  heroic 
souls  like  Roosevelt  who  demanded  that  America  at 
once  take  her  part  in  the  struggle.  In  July,  1793, 
"On  the  Anniversary  of  the  Storming  of  the  Bas- 
tile,"  he  raised  his  voice  in  no  uncertain  note  urging 
his  countrymen  to  fly  to  the  aid  of  the  nation  that 
had  aided  them  in  their  extremity. 


258  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Ye  sons  of  this  degenerate  clime, 
Haste,  arm  the  barque,  expand  the  sail; 
Assist  to  speed  that  golden  time 
When  Freedom  rules,  and  monarchs  fail; 
All  left  to  France — new  powers  may  join, 
And  help  to  crush  the  cause  divine. 

Ah !  while  I  write,  dear  France  Allied, 

My  ardent  wish  I  scarce  restrain, 

To  throw  these  Sybil  leaves  aside, 

And  fly  to  join  you  on  the  main: 
Unfurl  the  topsail  for  the  chace 
And  help  to  crush  the  tyrant  race ! 

And  his  lyric  of  1795,  "The  Republican  Genius  of 
Europe,"  might  well  be  taken  as  a  summing  up  of 
the  lessons  of  the  great  war  from  1914  to  1918: 

Emperors  and  kings !  in  vain  you  strive 

Your  torments  to  conceal — 
The  age  is  come  that  shakes  your  thrones, 
Tramples  in  dust  despotic  crowns, 

And  bids  the  sceptre  fail. 

In  western  worlds  the  flame  began: 

From  thence  to  France  it  flew — 
Through  Europe  now,  it  takes  its  way, 
Beams  an  insufferable  day, 

And  lays  all  tyrants  low. 

Genius  of  France!  pursue  the  chace 
Till  Reason's  laws  restore 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  259 

'Man  to  be  Man,  in  every  clime; — 
That  Being,  active,  great,  sublime 
Debas'd  in  dust  no  more. 

Even  the  war  of  the  flying-machines  would  not 
much  have  surprised  Philip  Freneau.  As  early  as 
1784,  in  his  poem,  "The  Progress  of  Balloons,"  he 
had  prophesied  aerial  warfare : 

If  Britain  should  ever  disturb  us  again, 
(As  they  threaten  to  do  in  the  next  George's  reign) 
No  doubt  they  will  play  us  a  set  of  new  tunes, 
And  pepper  us  well  from  their  fighting  balloons. 

Freight,  he  prophesied,  would  be  carried  whole 
sale  through  the  skies,  post-riders  would  "travel 
like  ghosts  on  the  wings  of  the  air,  and  stages 
would  all  spurn  the  ground  in  disdain" : 

The  stagemen,  whose  gallopers  scarce  have  the  power 

Through  the  dirt  to  convey  you  ten  miles  in  an  hour, 

When  advanc'd  to  balloons  shall  so  furiously  drive 

You  '11  hardly  know  whether  you're  dead  or  alive. 

The  man  who  in  Boston  sets  out  with  the  sun, 

If  the  wind  should  be  fair,  may  be  with  us  at  one, 

At  Gunpowder  Ferry  drink  whiskey  at  three, 

And  at  six  be  at  Edentown  ready  for  tea. 

(The  machine  shall  be  order'd,  we  hardly  need  say, 

To  travel  in  darkness  as  well  as  by  day.) 

At  Charleston  by  ten  he  for  sleep  shall  prepare 

And  by  twelve  the  next  day  be  the  devil  knows  where. 


260  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Few  of  our  American  poets  have  deserved  more 
than  Philip  Freneau  the  ancient  title  of  "seer,"  the 
one  who  sees  the  hidden  meanings  of  things  and 
who  may  look  with  revealing  eye  into  the  secrets 
of  the  years  that  are  to  be. 

II 

The  work  of  Freneau  during  the  French  Revolu 
tion  period  of  the  IJQO'S  was  but  an  incident  in  his 
poetic  career.  From  the  first  he  was  the  poet 
of  Revolution.  He  had  thrown  his  soul  into  the 
war  between  the  colonies  and  the  mother  country 
and  had  voiced  with  passion  every  phase  of  the 
struggle,  and  he  had  been  a  pioneer  in  the  romantic 
revolt  a  quarter  of  a  century  before  Wordsworth. 

His  poetic  career  had  begun  in  college,  where 
Madison,  later  to  be  President,  was  his  room-mate. 
He  had  excelled  in  Latin  and  Greek,  and  he  had 
dreamed  of  poetry  over  the  volumes  of  the  English 
poets,  especially  those  of  Pope  and  Gray.  Before 
he  was  out  of  his  teens  he  had  written  an  epic. 
Poetry  he  determined  should  be  his  life-work.  He 
surrendered  himself  to  it  with  all  the  abandon  of 
the  adolescent.  He  thought  poetry,  he  lived  it,  he 
dreamed  of  nothing  else.  And  to  his  credit,  though 
he  faced  all  his  life  those  conditions  that  drove  the 
poetic  completely  out  of  Madison  and  all  the  other  of 
his  contemporaries,  he  remained  to  the  end  of  his 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  261 

life,  as  best  he  could,  unfalteringly  true  to  the  dream 
of  his  youth.  Inferior  as  much  of  his  poetic  prod 
uct  is,  we  must  remember  always  that  he  gave 
his  generation  at  every  crisis  the  poetry  that  genera 
tion  best  could  understand. 

He  was  born  into  an  age  and  an  environment  al 
most  utterly  unpoetic.  Early  America  had  no  time 
for  the  muses.  He  who  sows  the  wilderness  and 
hopes  to  reap  the  fruits  of  his  toil  can  have  no 
avocation ;  culture  and  the  world  of  art  forever  must 
be  to  him  a  far-away  dream.  If  in  addition  to  this 
the  sower  has,  as  part  of  his  religious  creed,  a  con 
tempt  for  the  bright  and  the  beautiful,  there  will 
be  at  least  no  written  poetry.  For  two  centuries 
America  wrote  her  poetry  in  deeds.  She  was  with 
out  artistic  taste,  without  centers  or  standards  of 
culture,  and,  if  we  except  the  devotees  of  the  sermon 
and  the  almanac,  without  a  reading  class.  In  the 
North  the  muses  were  the  drudges  of  religious  dog 
matism  ;  in  the  South  they  had  been  cast  out  by  the 
practical  goddess  of  affairs.  The  mother  land  fur 
nished  no  inspiration;  seldom  in  the  history  of 
poetry  had  the  fire  burned  so  low.  Freneau  in  his 
apprentice  days  realized  the  difficulty.  He  wrote: 

There  are  few  writers  of  books  in  this  new  world, 
and  amongst  them  very  few  that  deal  in  works  of 
imagination.  In  a  country  which  two  hundred  years 
ago  was  peopled  only  by  savages  and  where  the  gov- 


262  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

ernment  has  ever  in  effect  been  no  other  than  republi 
can,  it  is  really  wonderful  that  there  should  be  any 
polite  original  authors  at  all  in  any  line,  especially  when 
it  is  considered  that  according  to  the  common  course  of 
things  any  particular  nation  or  people  must  have 
arrived  to  or  rather  passed  their  meridian  of  opulence 
and  refinement  before  they  consider  the  possession  of 
the  fine  arts  in  any  other  light  than  a  nuisance  to  the 
community. 

America  before  the  Revolution  was  destitute  of 
even  the  germs  of  an  original  literature,  and  yet 
Freneau,  with  his  optimism  and  fervid  republican 
ism  dreamed  of  an  independent  American  literature. 
He  saw  it,  however,  only  in  a  very  distant  future. 
Even  after  the  Revolution  we  find  him  confessing 
that  "they  [English  writers]  are  excusable  in  treat 
ing  the  American  authors  as  inferiors,  a  political 
and  a  literary  independence  of  a  nation  being  two 
very  different  things.  The  former  was  accomplished 
in  about  seven  years  and  the  latter  will  not  be  com 
pletely  effected,  perhaps,  in  as  many  centuries." 
Before  there  could  be  an  original  American  litera 
ture  there  must  be  some  great  primal  impulse  that 
should  stir  mightily  the  whole  people,  that  should 
shake  from  their  hands  the  old  books  and  the  old 
models,  that  should  arouse  them  to  a  true  realization 
of  themselves,  and  that  should  clear  the  atmosphere 
for  a  new  and  broader  view  of  human  life.  Such 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  263 

cataclysms  are  always  needed,  but  they  are  often 
centuries  apart. 

Fortunately  for  America  such  an  upheaval  was 
at  hand.  It  came  with  appalling  suddenness.  The 
colonists  had  had  no  gradual  preparation  for  the 
idea  of  separation  from  England.  As  late  as  1775 
Franklin  declared  before  the  House  of  Commons 
that  in  all  his  journeyings  up  and  down  the  colonies 
he  had  not  heard  expressed  one  single  wish  for  in 
dependence.  Even  after  Concord  and  Bunker  Hill 
Freneau,  the  radical,  could  write: 

Long  may  Britannia  rule  our  hearts  again, 
Rule  as  she  ruled  in  George  the  Second's  reign. 

The  idea  of  independence  came  all  in  a  moment, 
but  once  it  had  come  it  went  with  leaps  and  bounds 
to  extremes.  Never  in  all  history  has  a  whole 
people  been  lifted  by  such  rapid  stages  into  a  region 
of  such  vast  outlook.  We  can  trace  the  growth  of 
the  new  spirit,  not  decade  by  decade,  but  month  by 
month:  Justice,  Freedom,  Independence,  and  then 
the  radiant  vision  of  perfect  Liberty  and  the  Rights 
of  Man,  and  then,  like  a  torrent,  the  sense  of 
boundless  possibilities  and  glorious  destiny: 

No  pent-up  Utica  contracts  our  powers, 
But  the  whole  boundless  continent  is  ours. 

The  soul  of  man,  stirred  by  such  ideals  and  sue- 


264  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

cessful  in  realizing  them  beyond  his  dreams,  strug 
gled  for  utterance.  It  is  such  upheavals  in  human 
society  that  make  poets  and  bring  outbursts  of 
song  and  periods  in  the  history  of  literature.  But 
there  was  no  burst  of  song  in  America;  instead 
there  followed  one  of  the  most  pathetic  spectacles 
in  literary  history — a  people  with  a  vision  that 
transported  them  into  the  clouds,  yet  powerless 
through  environment  and  early  education  to  voice 
that  vision  in  song.  The  South,  thrilled  by  the 
new  spirit,  turned  it  at  once  into  action,  and  took 
the  leadership  in  war  and  statesmanship.  New 
England  lifted  up  her  voice,  but  she  could  speak  only 
through  the  medium  of  old  spiritual  conceptions  and 
worn-out  poetic  forms.  A  young  Connecticut  par 
son,  thrilled  through  and  through,  poured  his  en 
thusiasm  into  a  heroic  epic  of  the  wars  of  Joshua; 
a  brilliant  Boston  lad  would  sing  of  "War  and 
Washington,"  but  he  must  set  it  to  the  tune  of 
Dryden;  and  a  gifted  Connecticut  satirist,  over 
flowing  with  the  poetic  spirit,  was  content  simply 
to  add  new  American  cantos  to  "Hudibras."  With 
all  her  rimers  and  all  her  inspiration  New  England 
gave  forth  not  a  single  original  note.  It  was  a 
repeating  of  the  old  spectacle  of  a  heavenly  anthem 
sung  unto  shepherds,  unto  those  unable  to  give  it 
utterance. 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  265 

We  see  them,  however,  struggling  heroically  with 
the  burden.  From  1774,  when  Dwight  completed 
his  "Conquest  of  Canaan,"  "the  first  piece  of  this 
kind  ever  attempted  in  this  country,"  until  1808, 
which  ends  the  period  with  Barlow's  "Columbiad," 
the  "Polyolbion"  of  American  poetry,  the  years  are 
strewn  thick  with  the  wrecks  of  epics.  Every  poet 
of  the  era  felt  his  soul  burn  with  epic  fire.  Charles 
Brockden  Bro\vn  when  only  sixteen  had  started 
no  less  than  three  of  these  Homeric  efforts;  one 
on  the  discovery  of  America  and  one  each  on 
the  conquests  of  Mexico  and  Peru.  It  was  our 
heroic  era,  but  it  yielded  almost  nothing  of 
value. 

It  was  in  1772,  at  the  opening  of  this  age  of 
epics,  that  Freneau,  just  graduating  from  Prince 
ton,  found  his  first  poetic  opportunity.  Already 
over  his  Vergil  he  had  dreamed  of  Columbus  as 
a  greater  ^Eneas  who  had  sailed  into  the  pathless 
West  to  discover  a  world  and  to  plant  therein  seeds 
of  a  mightier  than  Rome,  but  his  work,  like  all 
schoolboy  epics,  had  resulted  only  in  fragments 
which  were  to  strew  his  earlier  volumes.  But  now 
commencement  was  at  hand.  Here  was  a  chance 
indeed;  here  was  a  theme  commensurate  with  the 
occasion.  Like  Milton,  he  would  essay  "things  un- 
attempted  yet  in  prose  or  rhyme" : 


266  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Now  shall  the  adventurous  Muse  attempt  a  theme 
More  new,  more  noble,  and  more  flush  of  fame 
Than  all  that  went  before. 

Never  were  graduation  exercises  based  on  broader 
foundations.  The  two  young  graduates,  for  he 
worked  in  conjunction  with  his  classmate  Bracken- 
ridge,  bewail  at  every  step  their  limitations  of  space. 
The  plan  they  suggest  is  the  plan  of  a  "Columbiad." 
They  would  begin  with  all  the  tale  of  Columbus; 
they  would  rehearse  the  story  of  Cortes  and  Pizarro ; 
they  would  discuss  at  learned  length  the  origin  and 
the  characteristics  of  the  Indians ;  they  would  tell  the 
story  of  the  early  colonies;  and  would  trace  the 
course  of  settlement  and  review  the  progress  and 
the  promise  of  agriculture  and  commerce;  they 
would  peer  into  the  future  and  mark  the  time 

when  we  shall  spread 

Dominion  from  the  North  and  South  and  West, 
Far  from  the  Atlantic  to  Pacific  shores 
And  shackle  half  the  convex  of  the  main. 

But,  alas,  the  time !  An  epic  cannot  be  condensed 
into  a  graduation  poem.  Suddenly  Freneau  (and 
we  must  not  read  the  poem  from  later  reprints 
where  the  author  frankly  admits  that  he  has  added 
new  lines  for  "a  supposed  prophetical  anticipation  of 
subsequent  events")  bursts  into  true  prophetic  rap 
ture.  Remember  this  was  in  1775,  when  the  wild 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  267 

Western  frontier  was  almost  within  sound  of  the 
Atlantic : 

I  see,  I  see, 

A  thousand  kingdoms  raised;  cities  and  men 
Numerous  as  sand  upon  the  ocean  shore. 
The  Ohio  soon  shall  glide  by  many  a  town 
Of  note;  and  where  the  Mississippi  stream, 
By  forest  shaded,  now  runs  weeping  on, 
Nations  shall  grow,  and  estates  not  less  in  fame 
Than  Greece  and  Rome  of  old.     We  too  shall  boast 
Our  Alexanders,  Pompeys,  Heroes,  Kings, 
That  in  the  womb  of  time  yet  dormant  lie, 
Waiting  the  joyful  hour  of  life  and  light, — 
O  snatch  me  hence,  ye  muses,  to  those  days 
When  through  the  vail  of  dark  antiquity 
Our  sons  shall  hear  of  us  as  things  remote, 
That  blossomed  in  the  morn  of  days. 

It  is  not  a  great  poem  if  we  measure  it  by  abso 
lute  standards;  but  it  is  a  very  great  poem  if  we 
view  it  in  connection  with  the  conditions  that  pro 
duced  it.  Full  as  it  is  of  Latin  influence  and  com 
mencement-day  zeal,  it  is  the  first  real  poem  that 
America  ever  made;  the  first  poem  that  was  im 
pelled  hot  from  a  man's  soul.  It  is  more  than  this : 
it  is  the  first  fruit  of  a  new  influence  in  the  world 
of  letters — the  first  literary  product  of  that  mighty 
force  that  set  in  motion  the  American  and  the 
French  Revolutions  with  all  that  they  mean  in  human 


268  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

history.     The  poem  at  times  reaches  the  heights. 

"Alas!"  cries  the  young  singer  with  a  ring  in  his 

voice  unknown  in  English  poetry  since  the  "spacious 

days," 

Alas! 

How  could  I  weep  that  we  were  born  so  soon 
Just  in  the  dawning  of  these  mighty  times 
Whose  scenes  are  painting  for  eternity. 

Here  at  last  is  an  inspired  and  original  singer  in 
the  wilderness  of  the  New  World;  here  at  last  is 
a  poet  who  can  voice  for  humanity  the  new  message 
from  free-aired  America. 


ill 

It  is  significant  that  this  earliest  poet  should  have 
come  from  the  middle  colonies.  He  was  neither 
Puritan  nor  Cavalier.  He  had  inherited  with  his 
Huguenot  blood  an  intense  love  for  liberty,  religious 
as  well  as  civil,  a  taste  for  the  bright  and  beautiful, 
a  vivacious  imagination,  a  sensitive,  excitable  nature 
that  longed  for  variety  and  found  delight  in  move 
ment,  and  a  sturdy  self-reliance  and  independence 
that  made  him  unwilling  long  to  follow  the  lead  of 
another.  "If  fortune,"  he  writes  in  his  young  man 
hood,  "or  the  ill  taste  of  the  public  compell  you 
ever  to  turn  shallopman  on  the  Delaware,  let  it  be 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  269 

your  first  care  to  have  command  of  the  boat.'* 
There  was  nothing  in  the  boy's  early  environment 
and  training  to  repress  this  fearless,  beauty-loving 
spirit.  New  York,  where  he  was  born  in  January, 
1752,  was  to  a  degree  neutral  territory  between 
the  extremes  of  the  North  and  the  South.  The 
father,  a  wine-merchant  in  easy  circumstances,  had 
filled  his  home  with  books  and  refinement,  and  had 
looked  carefully  to  the  education  of  his  children. 
At  fifteen  Freneau  was  so  well  prepared  for  Prince 
ton  that  the  president  sent  to  his  parents  a  special 
letter  of  congratulation. 

The  young  student's  instincts  were  refined  and 
scholarly.  There  are  evidences  that  he  read  while 
in  college  nearly  all  the  English  poets.  When  he 
first  began  to  write  verses  for  himself  we  do  not 
know.  It  was  certainly  early;  when  we  catch  our 
first  certain  glimpses  of  the  youth,  poetry  has  be 
come  with  him  a  passion  and  almost  a  vocation. 
As  early  as  1768  we  find  him  making  a  poetic  para 
phrase  of  the  book  of  Jonah,  in  the  orthodox  manner 
and  measure  of  Pope,  to  be  sure,  but  remarkably 
sustained  and  finished  for  the  work  of  a  freshman. 
A  little  later  he  tried  his  hand  at  a  more  original 
task,  a  piece  of  characterization  and  local  color, 
"The  Village  Merchant,"  a  poem  so  good  that 
twenty-six  years  later  he  deemed  it  worthy  of  sepa 
rate  publication.  As  his  college  course  progressed 


270  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

his  themes  became  more  ambitious.  He  made  in 
blank  verse  a  poem  on  "The  Pyramids  of  Egypt"; 
charmed  with  "L' Allegro"  and  "II  Penseroso,"  he 
repeated  their  sweet  music  in  "The  Ode  to  Fancy" 
and  "The  Citizen's  Resolve,"  the  most  fanciful  and 
genuinely  poetic  lyrics  that  up  to  the  time  had 
sprung  from  American  soil.  Then  as  he  read  in  his 
Seneca  the  prophetic  words  which  he  has  translated 
in  his  "Columbus  and  Ferdinand" : 

The  time  shall  come  when  numerous  years  are  past, 
The  ocean  shall  dissolve  the  hand  of  things 
And  an  extended  region  rise  at  last ; 

And  Typhis  shall  disclose  the  mighty  land 
Far,  far  away  where  none  have  roved  before, 
Nor  shall  the  world's  remotest  region  be 
Gibraltar's  rock  or  Thule's  savage  shore, 

he  napped  out  an  epic  of  the  New  World.  "Co 
lumbus  to  Ferdinand,"  "The  Antiquity  of  America," 
"Discovery,"  "Pictures  of  Columbus,"  and,  last  of 
all,  the  brilliant  "Rising  Glory  of  America,"  that 
epic  prelude,  are  but  the  scattered  and  distorted 
wreckage  of  this  glorious  vision.  Thus  did  the 
poet  serve  his  apprenticeship;  thus  singing  did  he 
go  from  college  into  the  world. 

So  far  Freneau  had  seen  life  only  at  a  distance, 
through  the  medium  of  his  books.  His  next  per 
iod  was  one  of  disillusion.  Unable  at  once  to  study 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  271 

a  profession  he  became  a  private  tutor,  but  after 
an  experience  of  thirteen  days  he  made  his  escape, 
and  late  in  1772  went  to  Somerset  County,  Mary 
land,  to  assist  his  classmate  Brackenridge  with  his 
little  academy.  From  this  exile  he  writes  Madison  : 
"I  have  printed  a  poem  in  New  York  called  The 
American  Village/  containing  about  four  hundred 
lines,  also  a  few  short  pieces  ...  as  to  the  main 
poem,  it  is  damned  by  all  good  and  judicious  judges. 
My  name  is  in  the  title  page."  He  is  full  of  po 
etical  plans;  poetry  is  his  real  vocation.  "I  am 
now  reading  physic  at  my  leisure  hours,  that  is  when 
I  am  neither  sleeping,  hearing  classes  or  writing 
poetry,  for  these  three  take  up  all  my  time."  Every 
thing  but  poesy  is  distasteful ;  teaching  he  abomi 
nates.  "It  worries  me  to  death  and  by  no  means 
suits  my  'giddy  wandering  brain.'  .  .  .  We  have 
about  thirty  students  in  this  academy  who  prey 
upon  me  like  leaches.  When  shall  I  leave  this 
whimpering  pack  and  hide  my  head  in  Acomack?" 
The  book  *  'damned  by  all  good  and  judicious 
judges"  has  been  "lost,"  as  Freneau  expressed  it,  "in 
the  lumber  of  forgotten  things."  Only  a  single 
mutilated  copy  survives  to  testify  that  it  was  the 
honest  work  of  a  true  poet,  one  who  was  not 
ashamed  to  put  his  name  on  the  title-page.  Its 
freshness  and  originality  were  doubtless  its  doom. 
The  age,  as  Wordsworth  was  to  learn  twenty  years 


272  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

later,  was  unaccustomed  to  pictures  of  homely  things 
made  with  the  eye  upon  the  object.  Gradually  the 
young  poet  awoke  to  the  realization  of  his  situation : 
America  was  unprepared  for  her  prophet ;  she  would 
not  listen  to  him.  The  discovery  shocked  and  em 
bittered  him.  "Barbers  cannot  possibly  exist  as 
such,"  he  writes,  "among  a  people  who  have  neither 
hair  nor  beards.  How  then  can  a  poet  hope  for 
success  in  a  city  where  there  are  not  three  persons 
possessed  of  elegant  ideas?"  Again  in  his  clever 
tale  of  the  sick  author,  who  recounts  in  what  we 
to-day  recognize  as  the  true  Stocktonian  manner  the 
various  transmigrations  olf  )his  soul  during  'the 
centuries,  he  writes : 

I  remember  I  wrote  poetry  as  long  ago  as  in  the 
reign  'of  Ezra-bel-haraden,  one  of  the  most  ancient 
kings  of  Persia.  ...  I  have  been  a  drayman's  horse, 
a  Jamaica's  field  negro,  a  sailor  in  an  English  man- 
of-war,  and  last  of  all,  to  complete  my  misery,  am 
now  doing  penance  as  an  American  poet.  What  will 
become  of  me  next  I  cannot  yet  tell.  Certain,  I  am, 
however,  that  be  the  change  what  it  may,  it  cannot  be 
very  much  for  the  worse. 

He  ever  dreamed  of  seeking  more  congenial  regions : 

Long  I  have  sat  on  this  disastrous  shore 

And  sighing,  sought  to  gain  a  passage  o'er 

To  Europe's  towers,  where,  as  our  travellers  say, 

Poets  may  flourish,  or,  perhaps  they  may. 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  273 

For  a  year  or  more  Freneau' s  pen  was  dipped  in 
vinegar.  His  intense  hatred  of  oppression,  his 
anger  at  the  insolence  of  the  British  at  Boston,  his 
bitterness  of  soul,  all  combined  to  fill  him  with  a 
kind  of  berserker  rage.  During  the  autumn  of 
1775  sarcasm  and  satire  fairly  rolled  from  his  pen. 
The  patriots  were  delighted;  here  was  something 
they  could  appreciate.  To  this  day  Freneau  is  re 
membered  chiefly  on  account  of  this  work.  In 
August  and  September  he  wrote  no  less  than  six 
long  poems,  four  or  five  of  which  were  issued  at 
short  intervals  as  pamphlets.  It  is  worthy  of  note, 
however,  that  to  none  of  these  hasty  outpourings 
did  the  poet  affix  his  name. 


IV 

This  first  period  of  satire  was  cut  short  late  in 
1775  by  a  business  venture  which  took  the  poet  to 
the  West  Indies.  "Mac  Swiggen,"  his  valedictory 
to  the  public  and  to  his  critics,  is  worthy  of  the  pen 
that  in  later  years  produced  "English  Bards  and 
Scotch  Reviewers."  There  is  real  pathos  in  its 
closing  lines : 

I  to  the  sea  with  weary  steps  descend, 

Quit  the  mean  conquest  that  such  swine  must  yield 

And  leave  Mac  Swiggen  to  enjoy  the  field. 


274*  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

In  distant  isles  some  happier  scene  I'll  choose 
And  court  in  softer  shades  the  unwilling  Muse. 

The  change  was  a  salutary  one.  Amid  the  novel 
scenery  and  dreamy  beauty  of  the  tropics,  Freneau 
forgot  his  rage,  forgot  the  narrow  carping  of  his 
critics,  and  the  bitterness  of  his  soul.  During  the 
next  year  and  more  he  did  his  strongest  and  most 
enduring  work.  "The  Beauties  of  Santa  Cruz," 
"The  House  of  Night,"  and  "The  Jamaica  Funeral," 
all  written  during  this  auspicious  interval,  give  us 
the  true  measure  of  Freneau's  power. 

In  "Santa  Cruz"  he  pours  out  his  first  rapture 
over  the  tropic  isles.  The  teeming  vegetation,  the 
novel  plant  forms — the  mangrove,  the  palmetto,  the 
tamarind — the  luscious  fruit  and  brilliant  flowers, 
the  sudden  and  fierce  hurricanes,  the  sensuous 
beauty  of  the  southern  night  when 

The  drowsy  pelican  wings  home  his  way 
The  misty  eve  sits  heavy  on  the  sea, 

thrilled  him  and  stirred  within  him  all  that  was 
poetic.  "Surely,"  he  cries,  "such  were  the  isles  that 
happy  Flaccus  sung,"  and  again, 

O  grant  me,  gods,  if  yet  condemned  to  stray, 
At  least  to  spend  life's  sober  evening  here. 

The  summer  isles  "betwixt  old  Cancer  and  the  mid 
way  line"  have  never  had  a  more  inspired  laureate ; 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  275 

to  this  day  "Santa  Cruz"  is  the  noblest  song  ever 
called  forth  by  the  West  Indies. 

Freneau  now  entered  the  region  of  pure  inven 
tion.  With  his  "House  of  Night"  he  became  one 
of  the  earliest  pioneers  in  that  dimly-lighted  region 
which  was  soon  to  be  exploited  by  Coleridge  and 
Poe.  The  poem  is  the  first  distinctly  romantic  note 
heard  in  America.  Moreover,  one  may  search  in 
vain  in  the  English  poetry  of  the  early  romantic 
movement  for  anything  that  can  equal  it  in  strength 
of  conception  and  in  sustained  mastery  over  the 
vaguely  terrible.  It  is  a  "vision  of  the  midnight 
hour,"  in  which  the  poet  is  led  to  a  mysterious 
"dome"  where  he  becomes,  despite  himself,  a  wit 
ness  of  the  death  of  the  grim  monster  Death  him 
self.  The  atmosphere  of  the  poem  is  vague  and 
awful.  The  page  that  recounts  the  poet's  depar 
ture  from  the  house  of  night  quaking  with  fear — 

Beneath  my  feet  substantial  darkness  lay 

And  screams  were  heard  from  the  distempered  ground, 

his  timid  look  behind  him  to  find  the  windows  of 
the  infernal  dome  a  "flaming  hell-red,"  the  fear 
ful  shrieks  of  the  dying  monster  within  the  walls, 
the  "hell- red  wandering  light"  that  led  to  the  graves, 
the  sudden  boom  of  the  sexton's  bell  above  him,  and 
then  the  troop  of  specters  galloping  fiercely  on 
Death's  horses,  while  "their  busy  eyes  shot  terror 


276  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

to  my  soul" — all  this  shows  the  power  of  the  man 
and  what  he  might  have  been  had  he  lived  in  a 
literary  atmosphere  with  competent  criticism  to 
guide  him.  As  a  product  of  pure  imagination  the 
poem  is  most  remarkable,  especially  when  we  view 
it  in  connection  with  the  English  literature  of  its 
day.  In  its  weird  supernaturalism  it  anticipated 
Scott,  and  in  its  early  atmosphere  of  unrelieved 
horror  it  clearly  anticipated  Coleridge. 

In  'The  Jamaica  Funeral"  Freneau  outlines  his 
early  philosophy  of  life.  The  poet  is  growing 
in  power  and  is  fast  breaking  from  the  influence 
of  Gray,  his  early  master.  It  is  a  Gallic  philosophy 
that  he  outlines;  he  is  becoming  infected  with 
Deism;  he  is  a  true  bacchanalian.  Is  there  not  a 
ring  of  the  "Rubaiyat"  in  a  stanza  like  this : 

Count  all  the  trees  that  crown  Jamaica's  hills, 
Count  all  the  stars  that  through  the  heavens  you  see, 
Count  every  drop  that  the  wide  ocean  fills — 
Then  count  the  pleasures  Bacchus  yields  to  me. 


Freneau's  second  period  of  satire  began  after  his 
confinement  in  the  British  prison-ships  during  the 
summer  of  1780.  The  experience  aroused  within 
him  a  fury  of  indignation  which  he  poured  out  with 
hot  pen.  In  a  bitter,  passionate  fury  he  bade  fare- 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  277 

well  to  the  muse  of  his  choice  and  turned  to  the 
sterner  muse  of  satire  who  alone  could  "suit  the 
taste."  During  the  next  three  years  he  wrote  the 
greater  number  of  those  satires  and  songs  which 
have  earned  for  him  the  title  of  "Poet  of  the  Revo 
lution."  Every  movement  of  "the  insolent  foe" 
called  out  a  scathing  criticism ;  every  heroic  deed 
of  the  struggling  patriots  called  out  a  lyric.  His 
poems  of  this  period  are  in  themselves  a  history 
of  the  last  years  of  the  war.  His  heart  was  in 
his  work ;  the  prison-ship  had  blotted  for  a  time  all 
memories  of  the  old  bitterness,  his  early  dreams, 
everything  save  the  one  thought  of  his  "injured 
country's  woe."  He  lampooned  without  mercy 
Cornwallis,  Clinton,  Carleton,  and  the  Royalist 
printers,  Rivington  and  Gaine.  He  sang  tender 
lyrics  of  the  patriot  dead  at  Eutaw  Springs  who 

saw  their  injured  Country's  woe; 
The  flaming  town,  the  wasted  field; 
Then  rushed  to  meet  the  insulting  foe; 
They  took  the  spear— but  left  the  shield. 

He  celebrated  the  naval  victories  of  Barney  and  of 
Jones,  and  he  called  down  maledictions  on  the  ship 
that  bore  the  "worthless  Arnold"  from  American 
shores.  It  is  interesting  in  these  days  after  our 
war  with  Germany  to  find  Freneau's  opinion  of  the 
Teutonic  troops  that  fought  against  the  patriots 


278  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

during  the  Revolution.  He  was  unsparing  in  his 
denunciation.  They  are  "the  slaves  of  kings," 
"brutish,"  "stupid,"  "smit  with  the  love  of  coun 
tries  not  their  own."  They  are  drunkards  "drink 
ing  from  German  sculls  old  Odin's  beer."  They 
are  worse  than  this.  For  troops  with  which  to  con 
quer  republican  America  the  despot  George 

His  phrenzy  rampant  with  the  right  divine, 
Explored  the  ancient  world,  to  chain  the  new, 
And  tired,  the  despot  searched  each  dark  recess 
And  ransacked  hell,  to  find  the  hireling  Hesse. 

Freneau  had  personal  experience  of  German  Kultur. 
When  a  prisoner  on  the  Hunter  hospital  ship  he 
was  attended  by  a  Hessian  surgeon,  who  was  the 
only  medical  man  the  hundreds  of  sick  prisoners 
were  allowed. 

Fair  science  never  called  the  wretch  her  son, 
And  art  disdained  the  stupid  man  to  own. 

This  doctor's  treatment  was  heroic.  "-Nostrums 
from  hell"  he  poured  out  in  indiscriminating  pro 
fusion. 

On  those  refusing  he  bestowed  a  kick, 
Or  menaced  vengeance  with  his  walking-stick; 
Here  uncontrolled  he  exercised  his  trade, 
And  grew  experienced  by  the  deaths  he  made ; 
By  frequent  blows  we  from  his  cane  endured 
He  killed  at  least  as  many  as  he  cured. 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  279 

In  his  prose  narrative  of  his  life  on  the  prison  ship 
Freneau  is  still  more  specific.  One  night  three  of 
the  prisoners  made  their  escape  in  the  ship's  boat. 

This  occasioned  new  trouble.  The  doctor  refused 
to  come  on  board,  and  as  he  rowed  past  us  next  morn 
ing  to  see  somebody  in  the  Jersey,  which  lay  near  us, 
some  of  the  sick  calling  to  him  for  blisters,  he  told 
them  to  put  tar  on  their  backs,  which  would  serve  as 
well  as  anything,  and  so  rowed  away.  However, 
after  two  or  three  days  his  wrath  was  appeased,  and 
he  deigned  to  come  on  board  again. 

And  he  the  sole  doctor  for  a  hospital  full  of  pa 
tients,  the  most  of  them  critically  ill. 

These  are  more  than  the  fleeting  voices  of  a 
newspaper  muse.  Scott  declared  that  "Eutaw 
Springs"  was  "as  fine  a  thing  as  there  is  of  the 
kind  in  the  language."  "The  Memorable  Victory 
of  Paul  Jones,"  written  when  America  was  full  of 
the  first  news  of  the  battle,  is  one  of  the  glories  of 
American  literature.  Longfellow  or  Whittier  never 
wrote  a  more  stirring  ballad.  It  moves  with  leaps 
and  bounds;  it  is  full  of  the  very  spirit  of  the  battle. 

She  felt  the  fury  of  her  ball, 
Down,  prostrate  down,  the  Britons  fall. 
The  decks  are  strew'd  with  slain, 
Jones  to  the  foe  his  vessel  lashed 
And  while  the  black  artillery  flashed 
Loud  thunders  shook  the  main. 


280  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

It  is  not  impertinent  to  observe  that  Thomas  Camp 
bell  was  but  four  years  of  age  when  this  appeared. 

This  stirring  lyric,  with  half  a  dozen  more  equally 
spirited,  makes  Freneau  not  only  the  earliest  but 
in  many  respects  the  strongest  of  American  naval 
lyrists.  In  dash  and  fire,  in  ability  to  catch  and 
reproduce  the  odors  and  the  atmosphere  o,f  the 
ocean,  in  enthusiasm  and  excitement  that  is  con 
tagious  and  that  plunges  the  reader  at  once  into  the 
heart  of  the  action,  and  in  glowing  patriotism  that 
makes  the  poems  national  hymns,  no  American  poet 
has  excelled  this  earliest  singer  of  the  American 
ocean.  Campbell  in  later  years  excelled  Freneau 
as  a  poet  of  battle  on  the  sea,  but  it  was  the  elder 
singer  who  furnished  him  his  inspiration  and  taught 
him  the  possibilities  of  the  ocean  as  domain  for  po 
etry.  Freneau  was  the  pioneer.  That  Campbell 
read  many  of  his  poems  we  know,  and  that  he  even 
took  from  them  at  least  one  whole  line,  without 
acknowledging  the  theft,  is  all  too  evident. 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  these  stirring  naval 
lyrics  have  been  so  long  lost  and  forgotten.  No 
true  American  can  read  without  a  thrill  of  pride 
and  of  patriotism  such  songs  as  ''Captain  Jones' 
Invitation"  and  "The  Death  of  Captain  Biddle,"  the 
intrepid  seaman  who  from  the  Randolph  poured 
death  into  the  British  ship — 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  281 

Tremendous  flash !  and  hark,  the  ball 

Drives  through  old  Yarmouth,  flames  and  all, 

and  then  at  the  moment  or  victory  was  blown  up 
by  his  own  magazine;  or  again  "Stanzas  on  the 
New  Frigate  Alliance/'  the  gallant  ship  "who  walks 
the  ocean  like  its  queen"  and  "Guards  her  native 
shore,"  and  "Barney's  Victory  over  the  General 
Monk,"  that  rollicking  song  of  battle  and  of  tri 
umph,  and  best  of  all,  perhaps,  "The  Sailor's  In 
vitation,"  which  is  full  of  the  very  salt  and  vigor 
of  the  western  seas.  It  was  not  Scott  or  Cooper 
that  added  the  domain  of  the  ocean  to  literature;  it 
was  Freneau.  His  books  are  full  of  the  roar  and 
the  sweep  of  the  ocean,  which  he  knew  as  the 
farmer  knows  his  ancestral  acres.  There  is  no  more 
true  and  vigorous  picture  of  an  ocean  voyage  and  a 
naval  combat  than  that  contained  in  Canto  I  of  "The 
British  Prison  Ship."  The  episode  of  the  boat 
swain's  (fiery  prayer  just  before  the  confBct  is 
unique  in  literature. 


VI 

The  Revolution  over,  Freneau,  after  following 
with  stinging  invective  the  departing  foe  and  after 
showering  with  ridicule  and  scorn  Rivington  and 


282  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Gaine  and  the  discomfited  Royalists,  found  his  oc 
cupation  gone.  The  impetuous  tide  of  his  hate 
and  his  outraged  sense  of  justice  and  of  freedom 
had  made  him  for  a  time  forget  his  early  dreams. 
He  had  realized  keenly  that  no  poet  can  build  a 
permanent  fame  upon  satire,  and  yet  to  serve  his 
injured  country  he  would  w^eld  no  other  pen. 
The  enemy  vanquished,  there  was  no  more  need  for 
satire.  But  his  countrymen,  delighting  in  the  bit 
ing  sarcasm  and  the  hard  blows  which  they  could 
fully  appreciate  and  enjoy,  demanded  more.  Fre- 
neau  turned  upon  them  with  bitterness :  "For  men 
I  keep  a  pen,"  he  cried,  "for  dogs  a  cane!"  He 
would  use  the  cane  no  more.  But  who  would  listen 
to  aught  but  rant  and  ridicule;  who  had  ears  to 
appreciate  anything  else?  Fate  had  thrown  him  in 
to  "a  bard-baiting  clime."  A  wave  of  the  old  bitter 
ness  swept  over  him : 

Expect  not  in  these  times  of  rude  renown 

That  verse  like  yours  will  have  the  chance  to  please: 

No  taste  for  plaintive  elegy  is  known 

Nor  lyric  ode — none  care  for  things  like  these. 

He  would  leave,  even  as  he  left  in  1776,  so 
cheerless  an  environment.  Business  again  called 
him  from  his  country;  he  became  the  captain  of  a 
coasting  vessel  plying  between  New  York  and 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  283 

Southern  ports.     There  is  in  his  second   farewell 
to  the  muse  a  note  of  real  pathos : 

Then,  Sylvius,  come — let  you  and  I 
On  Ocean's  aid  once  more  rely, 
Perhaps  the  Muse  may  still  impart 
Her  balm  to  ease  the  aching  heart. 
Though  cold  may  chill  and  storms  dismay 
Yet  Zoilus  will  be  far  away. 

Thereupon  he  became  our  poet  of  the  sea.  For 
years  he  was  a  captain  on  the  Atlantic,  wrecked  time 
and  again  during  voyages  to  the  Southern  ports 
and  the  West  Indies.  No  poems  written  in  America 
are  so  full  of  the  very  presence  and  soul  of  the 
ocean.  When  one  reads  his  "The  Hurricane,"  for 
instance,  first  published  with  the  title  "Verses  made 
at  Sea  in  a  Heavy  Gale,"  knowing  from  the  foot 
note  that  "Captain  Freneau's  ship  survived  the  vio 
lent  hurricane  off  Jamaica,  July  30,  1784,  when  no 
more  than  eight  out  of  150  sail  of  vessels  in  the 
ports  of  Kingston  and  Port  Royal  were  saved," 
the  poem  becomes  a  living  thing. 

The  poem  "Hatteras"  opens  with  the  realistic  line : 

In  fathoms  five,  the  anchor  gone. 

And  there  is  the  very  roll  of  the  ocean  in  its  broken 
stanzas : 


284  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

The  dangerous  shoal,  that  breaks  the  wave 

In  columns  to  the  sky; 

The  tempests  black,  that  hourly  rave, 

Portend  all  danger  nigh: 

Sad  are  my  dreams  on  ocean's  verge ! 

The  Atlantic  round  me  flows, 

Upon  whose  ancient  angry  surge 

No  traveller  finds  repose. 

There  is  vagabond  flavor  to  his  very  titles,  "Stanzas 
Written  at  the  Foot  of  Monte  Souffriere,  near  the 
Town  of  Basseterre,  Guadaloupe,"  "Stanzas  written 
at  the  Island  of  Maderia,"  "On  the  Peak  of 
Teneriffe,"  "Stanzas  written  in  Blackbeard's  Castle," 
"Lines  written  at  Sea,"  the  last  with  its  opening 
stanza : 

No  pleasure  on  earth  can  afford  such  delights 
As  the  heavenly  view  of  these  tropical  nights : 
The  glow  of  the  stars,  and  the  breeze  of  the  sea, 
Are  heaven — if  heaven  on  ocean  can  be. 

And  is  there  not  an  epigrammatic  quality  about 
this  nautical  summing  up  of  the  Bermuda  Islands: 

When  verging  to  the  height  of  thirty-two, 
And  east  or  west  you  guide  the  dashy  prow; 
Then  fear  by  night  the  dangers  of  this  shore, 
Nature's  wild  garden,  placed  in  sixty-four. 
Here  many  a  merchant  his  lost  freight  bemoans, 
And  many  a  gallant  ship  has  laid  her  bones. 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  285 


VII 

Here  was  a  man  equipped  by  nature  for  a  true 
poet,  a  man  with  a  message,  yet  dwarfed  and 
silenced  by  his  environment.  America  was  not 
ready  for  her  singer.  It  took  half  a  century  more 
to  make  way  in  the  wilderness  for  the  new  message 
that  had  been  whispered  to  Freneau  in  his  young 
manhood.  Had  he  been  a  great  world  poet  he 
would  have  been  heard  despite  all  difficulties,  he 
would  have  trampled  down  the  barriers  about  him 
and  compelled  his  age  to  listen,  but  the  task  was  be 
yond  him.  America  to  this  day  has  produced  no 
poet  who  single-handed  and  alone  could  have  per 
formed  such  a  labor  of  Hercules.  Freneau  turned 
deliberately  to  the  world  of  affairs  and  suffered  his 
early  dream  to  fade  gradually  away. 

In  June,  1786,  the  very  year  that  witnessed  the 
Kilmarnock  edition  of  Burns,  there  appeared  from 
the  press  of  Francis  Bailey  of  Philadelphia  the 
first  collected  edition  of  Freneau's  poems.  It  was 
published  with  hesitation;  its  author  was  at  sea; 
for  more  than  a  year  the  manuscript  had  been  in 
the  hands  of  the  printer.  From  his  advertisement 
it  appears  that  his  only  hope  for  the  success  of  the 
volume  lay  in  its  satire  and  songs  of  the  Revolu 
tion,  which,  as  they  had  appeared  "in  newspapers 


286  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

and  other  periodicals  in  the  different  states  of  Amer 
ica  during  the  late  war,"  had  been  read  with  "avid 
ity  and  pleasure." 

This  volume  to  this  day  has  never  received  the 
consideration  which  it  deserves.  It  was  the  first 
collection  of  poems  deserving  of  the  name  ever  made 
by  an  American  poet.  But  it  is  far  more  than  a 
mere  bibliographical  curiosity;  it  contained  the  first 
germs  of  true  original  poetry  that  America  pro 
duced.  It  was,  moreover,  the  work  of  a  man  who 
was  not  content  merely  to  follow,  but  who  left  his 
contemporaries  behind  and  pushed  vigorously, 
though  crudely,  it  must  be  confessed,  into  untrodden 
regions  and  blazed  pathways  in  the  wilderness. 
Had  he  like  the  later  Longfellow  been  allowed  to 
seek  the  European  sources  of  culture  and  to  live 
easily  in  poetic  environment,  who  may  tell  what 
would  have  been  the  result? 

Had  this  early  volume  been  an  English  book,  it 
long  ago  would  have  figured  largely  in  the  his 
tories  of  the  romantic  and  naturalistic  movement 
which  resulted  in  the  outburst  of  song  that  has 
marked  our  present  century.  That  Freneau  was 
a  pioneer  in  the  dim,  romantic  world  that  was 
to  be  explored  by  Coleridge  and  Poe  no  one  may 
doubt  who  reads  his  "House  of  Night" ;  that  he  was 
a  pioneer  in  the  movement  that  succeeded  in  throw- 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  287 

ing  off  the  chain  forged  by  Pope  is  evident  from 
even  a  cursory  examination  of  his  editions.  "The 
Wild  Honeysuckle,"  for  instance,  which  was 
written  in  1786,  twelve  years  before  the  appearance 
of  the  "Lyrical  Ballads,"  is  as  spontaneous  and  as 
free  from  Pope  as  anything  by  Wordsworth.  It  is 
a  nature  lyric  written  with  the  eye  upon  the  object, 
without  recollection  of  other  poetry,  and  it  draws 
from  the  humble  flower  a  lesson  for  humanity  in 
the  true  Wordsworthian  manner.  Before  Freneau, 
American  poetry  had  been  full  of  the  eglantine,  the 
yew,  and  the  Babylonian  willow,  the  nightingale, 
the  lark — the  flora  and  the  fauna  of  Hebrew  and 
British  bards.  Classic  English  poetry  had  looked 
away  from  the  actual  landscape  and  had  been  about 
as  British  in  background  as  the  "Eclogues"  of 
Vergil.  In  Freneau  we  find  for  the  first  time 
the  actual  life  of  the  American  forest — the  wild 
pink,  the  elm,  the  wild  honeysuckle,  the  pumpkin, 
the  blackbird,  the  squirrel,  the  "loquacious  whip- 
poor-will" — and  in  addition  to  this  the  varied 
life  of  the  American  tropic  islands.  We  find 
for  the  first  time  examples  of  that  true  poetic 
spirit  that  could  find  poetry  in  humble  and  even 
vulgar  things;  that  furthermore,  like  Burns,  could 
draw  from  the  phenomena  of  lo\vly  nature 
deep  lessons  for  human  life.  He  sees  the 


288  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

reflection  of  the  stars  in  the  bosom  of  the  river: 

But  when  the  tide  had  ebbed  away 
The  scene  fantastic  with  it  fled. 

A  bank  of  mud  around  me  lay, 
And  sea-weed  on  the  river's  bed. 

And  from  this  he  draws  the  obvious  moral.  Con 
sider  what  Pope  would  have  said  of  mud.  Indeed, 
to  appreciate  Freneau,  one  must  habituate  one's 
self  to  the  atmosphere  of  the  classic  age  and  view 
things  from  the  classic  point  of  view.  Whether 
Freneau  influenced  the  school  of  poets  who  in  Eng 
land  broke  away  from  the  eighteenth  century  meth 
ods  it  is  useless  to  ask.  We  may  observe,  however, 
that  Freneau's  poems  were  known  and  read  freely 
in  England  at  the  dawn  of  the  critical  period  in 
British  poetry,  and  that  even  Scott  could  "lift" 
without  comment  a  whole  line  from  one  of  them. 
In  his  use  of  his  native  land  and  his  familiar  sur 
roundings  as  a  background  for  art  Freneau  dis 
covered  the  poetical  side  of  the  Indian,  and  thus 
became  the  literary  father  of  Brockden  Brown, 
Cooper,  and  the  little  school  of  poetry  which  in  the 
early  years  of  the  century  fondly  believed  that  the 
aboriginal  American  was  to  be  the  central  figure  in 
the  poetry  of  the  New  World.  To  the  little  real 
poetry  that  there  is  in  the  Indian,  Freneau  did  full 
justice.  He  went,  however,  to  no  such  absurd 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  289 

lengths  as  did  Cooper  and  Eastburn  and  Whittier. 
His  "Indian  Death  Song" — if  the  poem  indeed  be 
his — which  is  full  of  the  wild,  stoical  heroism  of 
the  brave  who  is  dying  beneath  the  torture  of  his 
enemies,  makes  all  that  is  possible  of  the  theme. 
There  has  been  no  more  true  and  poetic  rendering 
of  this  distinctly  American  phase  of  human  char 
acter.  In  "The  Indian  Student"  he  has  done  justice 
to  the  Indian's  love  for  the  forest  and  to  the  un 
tamable  wildness  of  his  nature.  "The  Dying 
Indian"  and  "The  Indian  Burying  Ground"  sum 
up  all  that  is  poetic  in  Indian  legend  and  all  that  is 
pathetic  in  the  fate  of  the  vanishing  race.  Poetry, 
if  it  is  to  confine  itself  to  the  truth,  can  do  little 
mor<e  for  the  Indian. 


VIII 

Such  was  Philip  Freneau,  a  man  in  every  respect 
worthy  to  bear  the  title  "father  of  American 
poetry."  He  was  the  first  true  poet  born  upon  our 
our  continent;  he  realized  in  his  early  youth  his 
true  vocation;  he  gave  himself  with  vigor  and  en 
thusiasm  to  his  calling;  he  fitted  himself  with  wide 
reading  and  classic  culture;  he  received  the  full 
inspiration  of  a  great  movement  in  human  society ; 
he  lifted  up  his  voice  to  sing,  but  he  was  smothered 
and  silenced  by  his  contemporaries.  He  was  all 


290  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

alone;  he  had  about  him  no  circle  of  "Pleiades"  to 
encourage  and  assist;  he  had  no  traditions  behind 
him  that  would  compel  silence.  He  was  out  of 
step  with  the  theology  of  his  generation;  he  was 
out  of  tune  with  the  music  of  his  day ;  he  was  beat 
ing  time  ha'lf  a  century  ahead  of  the  chorus  about 
him.  The  people  have  to  be  educated  to  revolution, 
and  America  had  not  yet  learned  to  take  the  ini 
tiative  in  things  intellectual  and  esthetic.  She 
must  follow  the  literary  fashions  beyond  the  sea. 
Freneau  was  for  breaking  violently  from  England 
and  for  setting  up  a  new  standard  of  culture  and 
literary  art  on  this  side  of  the  water. 

Can  we  never  be  thought 
To  have  learning  or  grace, 
Unless  it  be  brought 
From  that  damnable  place? 

But  he  reckoned  without  his  countrymen.  Not 
until  Emerson's  day  did  it  dawn  upon  Amercia 
that  it  was  possible  for  her  to  think  for  herself  and 
make  poetry  that  did  not  echo  the  bards  of  England. 
Thus  did  America  reject  her  earliest  poet;  thus  did 
she  stop  her  ears  and  compel  him  to  lay  aside  his 
seven-stringed  lyre  for  the  horn  and  the  bagpipes. 

Freneau  lived  to  see  his  discarded  harp  in  full 
tune  in  other  hands,  first  in  England  and  then  in 
his  own  land.  There  is  something  pathetic  in  the 


The  Modernness  of  Philip  Freneau  291 

figure  of  the  old  minstrel  who  had  realized  almost 
nothing  of  his  early  dream  and  yet  who  had  been 
told  by  the  great  Jeffries  that  the  time  would  surely 
come  when  his  poems  would  command  a  com 
mentator  like  Gray,  who  had  been  extravagantly 
praised  by  such  masters  as  Scott  and  Campbell,  who 
had  written  to  Madison  as  late  as  1815,  "my 
publisher  tells  me  the  town  will  have  them  [his 
verses]  and  of  course  have  them  they  will" — it  is 
pathetic  to  see  this  poet  in  his  hoary  old  age,  for 
he  lived  until  1832,  realizing  that  he  had  been  ut 
terly  forgotten,  witnessing  the  triumph  of  the  very 
songs  that  had  haunted  his  youth,  and  seeing  those 
who  had  not  half  his  own  native  ability  crowned 
by  those  who  had  rejected  and  forgotten* -him. 

America  has  been  unjust  to  Freneau.  For  a 
century  she  left  his  poems  in  their  first  editions, 
which  are  now  rare  and  costly;  she  scattered  his 
letters  and  papers  to  the  winds;  she  garbled  and 
distorted  his  life  in  every  book  of  reference  and 
left  untold  the  true  story  of  his  career.  The  present 
generation  knows  him  only  as  "the  poet  of  the  Rev 
olution,"  and  they  dismiss  him  unread  with  the  flip 
pant  criticism  that  he  was  a  hasty  and  slipshod 
maker  of  newspaper  verse  nearly  all  of  which  has 
reached  a  deserved  oblivion.  That  this  is  unjust 
and  unfounded  every  one  who  has  read  Freneau  can 
bear  witness.  He  was  a  scholar  of  real  attain- 


292  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

ments;  he  was  a  critic  with  discernment;  he  was  a 
conscientious  workman.  That  he  labored  upon  his 
lines  with  care  can  be  proved  by  following  the 
thoughtful  changes  in  his  different  editions;  that  he 
followed  poetry  with  all  the  passion  of  a  Poe  there 
is  abundant  proof;  that  he  regarded  his  satires  and 
his  jingles  as  a  poetic  avocation  is  written  all  over 
his  literary  remains;  and  that  he  was  forced  to 
abandon  the  muse  of  his  choice  we  have  attempted 
to  show.  There  are  few  sadder  spectacles  in  our 
literary  history  than  the  old  poet  deliberately 
abandoning  the  dream  of  his  youth,  and  cutting 
from  his  later  volumes  the  greater  part  of  such 
lyrics  as  "The  House  of  Night"  and  ''The  Jamaica 
Funeral"  because  a  crude  public  would  not  under 
stand  and  tolerate.  But  time  works  slowly  with 
her  verdicts ;  true  merit  in  the  end  is  sure  to  receive 
its  deserts,  and  Freneau  may  even  yet  be  given  the 
place  that  is  his. 


THE  CENTENARY  OF  BRYANT'S 
POETRY 


THE  publication  of  Bryant's  first  significant  book, 
"Poems  by  William  Cullen  Bryant,"  Cambridge, 
Massachusetts,  1821,  a  thin  little  volume  of  forty- 
eight  pages,  containing  "The  Ages,"  "To  a  Water 
fowl,"  "Translation  of  a  Fragment  of  Simonides," 
"Inscription  for  the  Entrance  to  a  Wood,"  "The 
Yellow  Violet,"  "Song,"  "Green  River,"  and 
"Thanatopsis,"  marks  the  beginning  of  classic 
American  poetry.  So  often  has  this  been  repeated 
in  the  text-books,  and  so  continually  has  it  been 
iterated  in  the  schools,  that  it  has  become  for  all  of 
us  an  axiom  to  be  accepted  without  question.  But 
with  the  present  year  has  come  a  new  sensation. 
The  book  is  now  entering  upon  its  second  century. 
The  first  undisputed  American  classic  has  outlasted 
three  generations :  American  poetry  is  now  of  age. 

The  American  short  story,  if  we  count  "Rip 
Van  Winkle"  as  the  earliest  specimen,  celebrated 
its  centennial  in  1919;  the  American  novel,  if  we 
count  "The  Spy"  as  the  beginning,  became  of  age 

293 


294  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

in  1921,  but  somehow  Bryant  seems  farther  away 
from  us  than  Irving  though  Irving  died  in  1859,  and 
farther  away  than  Cooper  though  he  died  in  1851. 
Bryant  is  our  oldest  classic  American  writer  in  a  pe 
culiar  sense.  It  is  now  over  forty  years  since  he 
died,  the  measure  of  a  generation,  but  at  the  time  of 
his  death  he  had  lived  for  half  a  century  beyond 
the  period  of  his  really  distinctive  work.  As  a 
poet  he  sprang  into  fame  as  early  as  1817,  and  from 
that  point  on  there  was  not  a  time  when  he  was  not 
rated  among  the  greatest  of  American  poets.  Our 
grandfathers  and  great-grandfathers  settled  it  that 
he  was  a  classic.  During  the  lifetime  of  us  all  he 
has  been  a  half-mythical  figure,  a  patriarchal  en 
graving  on  the  walls  of  schoolhouses.  The  poems  , 
we  associate  with  his  name  seem  the  appro 
priate  work  of  such  a  bard :  contemplations  of  death, 
peerings  into  the  abysmal  gulfs  of  time,  Druidic 
meditations  amid  the  ancient  forests.  He  has  been 
our  bardic  figure,  the  hoary-bearded  gleeman  of  our 
period  of  origins,  our  half-mythical  Homer.  It  has 
seemed  to  throw  back  the  beginnings  of  our  poetry 
into  a  region  primeval ;  it  has  given  it  an  atmosphere 
more  mellow  than  we  could  have  deemed  possible. 
With  a  century  of  perspective  we  may  begin  to 
speak  now  with  confidence.  The  contemporary 
jealousies,  ambitions,  friendships,  have  been  forgot 
ten;  the  claques  of  the  Percivals,  the  Hallecks,  the 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry  295 

Pierponts,  the  Danas  have  passed  completely  into 
oblivion ;  the  extravagant  overpraisings  of  the  early 
editors  like  Stoddard  have  been  reduced  to  real 
Value — one  may  now  see  over  the  underbrush. 
What  of  William  Cullen  Bryant  after  a  century  of 
his  work? 


ii 

Criticism  of  Bryant  must  begin  always  with  the 
statement  that  he  was  a  New  Englander.  In  his 
poetic  product — and  in  none  other  is  he  distinctive 
— he  is  no  more  to  be  classed  as  a  Knickerbocker 
than  is  Whittier.  He  was  a  descendant  of  Puritans 
in  unbroken  lines,  the  best  blood  of  New  England — • 
the  Aldens,  Bryants,  Howards,  Ameses,  Harrises, 
Haywards,  Kieths,  Mitchells,  Packards,  Snells, 
Washburns — English  with  a  mixture  of  Cal- 
vinistic  Scotch.  The  family  early  had  moved  from 
the  Massachusetts  Bay  environment  westward  into 
the  mountains.  When  Bryant  was  born,  it  was  at 
Cummington  in  the  Berkshires  on  a  farm  more 
remote  from  city  influences  than  even  Whittier's. 
It  was  a  Puritan  home  of  the  older  type,  a  survival. 
Puritanism  we  know  died  first  at  the  large  centers; 
it  persisted  in  all  its  primitive  sternness  and  auster 
ity  for  a  generation  or  two  more  in  the  remoter 
valleys  and  quieter  villages;  lingered  indeed  far 


296  Side -Lights  on  American  Literature 

down  into  the  last  century  when  it  faded  out.  Bryant 
was  the  last  conspicuous  example  of  it:  the  last 
of  the  Puritans. 

To  understand  him  at  all  one  must  study  the 
home  in  which  he  was  reared,  the  household  of  his 
grandfather  Snell  in  which  were  passed  those  im 
pressionable  years  that  molded  him.  Here  an  at 
mosphere  sternly  Calvinistic:  the  Bible  read  aloud 
in  solemn  tones ;  prayers  morning  and  evening  ring 
ing  always  with  the  fervid  poetic  diction  and  the 
resonant  doom  notes  of  Hebrew  prophets.  One 
solemn  petition,  reiterated  daily,  filled  the  childish 
imagination  with  something  like  terror:  "Let  not 
our  feet  stumble  on  the  dark  mountains  of  eternal 
death."  He  was  nurtured  upon  Watts's  psalms  and 
hymns,  repeating  with  unction  at  three  "with  his 
book  in  my  hand  and  with  such  gestures  as  were 
prescribed  for  me"  such  tremendous  stanzas  as 

Spare  us,  O  Lord!  aloud  we  pray; 

Nor  let  our  sun  go  down  at  noon; 
Thy  years  are  one  eternal  day, 

And  must  thy  children  die  so  soon? 

The  boy  pleased  the  grim  Puritan  grandfather. 
At  ten  he  received  from  him  a  ninepenny  piece  for  a 
rimed  version  of  the  first  chapter  of  Job.  Re 
warded  thus,  he  proceeded  to  paraphrase  the  one 
hundred  and  fourth  Psalm.  Storm  and  stress  of 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry  297 

soul  came  before  his  teens.  'The  prayer  of  the 
publican  in  the  New  Testament  was  often  in  my 
mouth,  and  I  heard  every  variety  of  prayer  at  the 
Sunday  evening  services  conducted  by  laymen  in 
private  houses."  Before  him  always  was  the  iron 
grandfather:  "I  can  hardly  find  words  to  express 
the  awe  in  which  I  stood  of  him." 

But  there  was  another  influence  in  the  home. 
The  version  of  Job,  rewarded  by  the  grandfather 
because  of  its  piety,  was  condemned  by  the  father 
because  of  its  poetic  crudity.  The  father  had 
tastes  which  one  would  hardly  expect  to  find  in  that 
austere  environment.  He  had  been  at  Harvard  for 
a  time,  he  had  received  medical  instruction  from  the 
famous  French  exile  Laprilete,  he  had  been  surgeon 
of  a  merchant  vessel,  had  been  detained  a  year 
among  the  French  of  the  West  Indies,  had  sailed  to 
the  East  Indies  and  rounded  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope 
where  he  had  suffered  shipwreck — stormy  petrel, 
indeed,  in  the  remote  Berkshire  village.  He  brought 
a  whiff  of  the  world — French,  which  he  read  and 
spoke  with  fluency,  polished  manners,  fastidiousness 
in  dress,  religious  broadness  that  went  even  to  Uni- 
tarianism,  and,  most  important  of  all  as  we  see  it 
to-day,  a  taste  for  the  refinements  of  art  and  litera 
ture  that  manifested  itself  in  new  books  added  to 
the  primitive  Watts  and  Milton  and  Bunyan  of  the 
family  store:  Pope's  "Iliad,"  Thomson,  Gold- 


298  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

smith,  Cowper — indeed  'Volumes  of  most  of  the 
eminent  English  poets."  "He  wrote  verses  him 
self,"  his  son  goes  on,  "mostly  humorous  and  satir 
ical.  He  was  not  unskilled  in  Latin  poetry,  in 
which  the  odes  of  Horace  were  his  favorites.  He 
was  fond  of  music,  played  on  the  violin,  and  I  re 
member  hearing  him  say  that  he  once  made  a  bass 
viol." 

The  young  Bryant  was  fragile,  precocious,  over- 
intellectual,  predisposed  to  consumption,  the  grim 
specter  of  which  haunted  him  even  into  manhood 
like  a  foreboding  of  death.  His  little  sister  faded 
and  died  during  that  home  period  of  his  life  when 
every  emotion  stamps  the  soul.  Everything — his 
puritanical  environment,  his  frail  hold  upon  the 
physical,  his  reading  in  the  elegiac  school  of  poets: 
Young,  Gray,  Parnell,  Blair — all  inclined  him  to 
meditation,  melancholy,  poetic  thought. 

He  appears  never  to  have  had  a  boyhood.  Never 
in  his  recollection  was  there  a  time  when  he  was  not 
pointed  out  as  the  writer  of  remarkable  poetry. 
As  a  child  he  declaimed  original  verse  as  a  school 
exercise ;  at  thirteen  he  was  the  author  of  a  book  so 
successful — sad  stuff  now — that  a  second  and  en 
larged  edition  was  printed,  at  fourteen  he  was  pre 
paring  for  college  under  the  tutelage  of  his  grand 
father's  brother,  another  grim  Puritan,  who  drove 
the  boy  mercilessly,  allowing  not  a  moment  for 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry  299 

play,  through  interminable  Latin :  in  eight  months 
through  the  "Colloquies"  of  Corderius,  all  of  Vergil, 
the  "Orations"  of  Cicero,  and  the  New  Testament 
in  Latin.  Then  came  the  Greek  under  another  in 
flexible  divine :  the  Rev.  Mr.  Hallack. 

I  was  early  at  my  task  in  the  morning,  and  kept  on 
till  bedtime;  at  night  I  dreamed  of  Greek,  and  my 
first  thought  in  the  morning  was  of  my  lesson  for  the 
day.  At  the  end  of  two  calendar  months  I  knew 
the  Greek  New  Testament  from  end  to  end  almost 
as  if  it  had  been  English. 

At  fifteen  he  entered  the  sophomore  class  at 
Williams,  and  after  two  terms  he  left,  dissatisfied 
with  the  intellectual  standards  of  the  college.  Such 
was  the  boy  Bryant. 

His  hopes  of  attending  Yale  disappointed  by 
financial  conditions  at  home,  he  spent  the  autumn 
unsettled.  Now  it  was  that  his  father  brought  him 
from  Boston  Southey's  "Remains  of  Henry  Kirke 
White" — red-letter  day  for  the  young  poet.  Here 
was  a  kindred  soul,  a  genius  stricken  with  consump 
tion  before  life  had  fairly  opened,  and  crying  out  in 
agony  of  spirit.  "I  read  the  poems  with  great  eager 
ness  and  so  often  that  I  committed  several  of  them 
to  memory,  particularly  the  ode  to  the  Rosemary." 
Strange  choice  it  would  seem  now.  Here  is  the 
opening  stanza : 


300  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Sweet  scented  flower!  who  art  wont  to  bloom 

On  January's  front  severe, 

And  o'er  the  wintery  desert  drear 
To  waft  thy  waste  perfume! 
Come,  thou  shalt  form  my  nosegay  now, 
And  I  will  bind  thee  round  my  brow ; 

And  as  I  twine  the  mournful  wreath, 
I  '11  weave  a  melancholy  song ; 
And  sweet  the  strain  shall  be,  and  long, 

The  melody  of  death. 

Kirke  White  as  we  read  him  today  has  little 
save  his  sentimental  melancholy  and  his  echoes  of 
earlier  music — Milton,  Cowley,  Thomson,  Young 
— but  to  the  young  Berkshire  Piiritan  who  had 
been  reared  in  daily  contemplation  of  death  and 
who  felt  that  he  too  was  early  for  the  tomb,  he  was 
a  twin  soul.  His  declamatory,  "Thanatopsis"-like 
poem  "Time,"  his  lyric  "To  an  Early  Primrose" 
suggestive  of  "The  Yellow  Violet"  to  come,  his 
titles  "Thanatos"  and  "Athanatos,"  all  had  their 
effect  upon  the  maturing  poet. 

There  were  other  influences.  "I  remember  read 
ing,  at  that  time,  that  remarkable  poem,  Blair's 
'Grave/  and  dwelling  with  pleasure  upon  its  finer 
passages.  I  had  the  opportunity  of  comparing  it 
with  a  poem  on  a  kindred  subject,  also  in  blank 
verse,  that  of  Bishop  Porteus  on  'Death'  " — strange 
field  of  study  for  youth  of  sixteen.  Other  books 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry   301 

he  found :  "a  thin  volume  of  the  miscellaneous  poems 
of  Southey,"  and  Cowper,  whom  he  studied  anew. 
"I  now  passed  from  his  shorter  poems,  which  are 
generally  mere  rhymed  prose,  to  his  Task,'  the  finer 
passages  of  which  supplied  a  form  of  blank  verse 
that  captivated  my  admiration." 

The  autobiography  ends  here,  but  enough  is  given 
to  explain  the  early  Bryant :  his  Puritan  soul  with 
its  brooding  sense  of  death;  the  melancholy  pathos 
of  Kirke  White;  the  resonant  funereal  declamation 
of  Blair,  notably  in  such  passages  as  that  beginning, 

What  is  this  world? 
What  but  a  spacious  burial  field  unwalled? 

and,  finally,  the  easy  naturalness  of  Cowper's  blank 
verse.  That  the  young  student,  aware  as  he  must 
have  been  of  his  own  powers,  should  be  trying 
his  pen  as  he  pored  ov^er  his  masters,  was  inevitable. 
At  some  time  during  the  period  he  made  an  attempt 
of  his  own,  an  exercise  we  may  call  it — several  at 
tempts  indeed — and  stowed  them  away  in  his  desk 
uncompleted  to  be  elaborated  some  time  perchance 
into  finished  wholes. 

in 

The  time  had  come  to  leave  Latin  and  Greek  and 
poetry.  Literature  as  a  profession  was  impossible 
in  America.  "Some  men  of  taste  and  learning 


302  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

amongst  us,"  to  quote  his  words  in  1818,  "might  oc 
casionally  amuse  their  leisure  with  poetical  trifles," 
but  with  Bryant  there  could  be  no  divided  allegiance. 
The  crisis  of  his  life  was  upon  him.  What  strug 
gles  he  passed  through  we  do  not  know:  there  are 
no  self-revealing  letters  as  in  Longfellow's  case. 
We  know  only  that  he  chose  the  law  and  that  he 
gave  himself  to  it  with  all  the  Puritan  earnestness 
that  formerly  he  had  given  to  his  college  prepara 
tion.  His  poem  "To  a  Friend  on  His  Marriage," 
published  in  "The  North  American  Review"  in 
1818  and  manifestly  written  during  the  period  of 
his  legal  studies,  indicates  that  he  deliberately  aban 
doned  the  muses.  He  turned  to  his  "harp,  neg 
lected  long,"  only  to  celebrate  a  friend's  marriage : 

Such  be  thy  days. — O'er  Coke's  black  letter  page, 
Trimming  the  lamp  at  eve,  't  is  mine  to  pore ; 
Well  pleased  to  see  the  venerable  sage, 
Unlock  his  treasur'd  wealth  of  legal  lore; 
And  I,  that  lov'd  to  trace  the  woods  before, 
And  climb  the  hill  a  play  mate  of  the  breeze 
Have  vow'd  to  tune  the  rural  lay  no  more, 
Have  bid  my  useless  classicks  sleep  at  ease, 
And  left  the  race  of  bards  to  scribble,  starve  and 
freeze. 

Farewell. — When  mildly  through  the  naked  wood, 
The  clear  warm  sun  effus'd  a  mellow  ray ; 
And  livelier  health  propell'd  the  vital  flood, 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry  303 

Loitering  at  large,  I  pour'd  the  incondite  lay, 
Forgot  the  cares  and  business  of  the  day, 
Forgot  the  quirks  of  Lyttleton  and  Coke, 
Forgot  the  public  storms,  and  party  fray; 
And,  as  the  inspiring  flame  across  me  broke, 
To  thee  the  lowly  harp,  neglected  long,  I  woke. 

When  "Thanatopsis"  appeared  in  "The  North 
American  Review/'  he  had  completed  his  four  years 
of  legal  study,  had  been  admitted  to  the  bar,  and 
had  practised  law  for  two  years.  He  was  twenty- 
three  years  of  age  and  had  settled  down  into  his 
profession  with  no  thought  of  change.  To  get 
the  impression  that  he  was  toying  half-heartedly 
with  the  law  and  that  he  was  scribbling  poetry  when 
he  should  have  been  studying  legal  cases,  one  must 
neglect  all  that  we  know  of  him.  He  was  grandson 
of  that  grim  Puritan  who  had  put  him  in  front  of 
him  at  the  hay-raking  to  rap  his  heels  if  he  fell 
behind.  Through  his  whole  life  he  applied  himself 
unreservedly  to  the  duty  at  hand. 

Literary  fame  came  suddenly  and  by  accident. 
The  story  that  his  father  found  in  his  desk  frag 
ments  of  his  earlier  poetical  exercises  and  took  them 
to  the  editors  of  "The  North  American  Review" 
bears  all  the  marks  of  truth.  A  glance  at  the  poems 
in  their  earlier  form  is  convincing.  Never  would 
author  present  his  material  in  such  form:  the 
four  riming  quatrains,  boyishly  inferior,  printed  as 


304  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

if  they  were  a  part  of  the  blank  verse  fragment, 
the  abrupt  beginning  and  the  sudden  ending  of 
the  main  piece  as  if  it  were  a  part  wrenched  out  of 
a  whole,  and  the  second  piece  without  even  a  title. 
This  latter  fragment,  afterward  to  be  expanded 
under  the  title,  "Inscription  for  the  Entrance  of  a 
Wood,"  surely  must  have  been  written  after  reading 
Southey's  collection  of  "Inscriptions,"  perhaps  after 
that  entitled  "For  a  Tablet  on  the  Banks  of  a 
Stream."  It  reads  like  the  blank  verse  of  the  later 
Bryant : 

Stranger!  a  while  upon  this  mossy  bank 

Recline  thee.     If  the  Sun  rides  high,  the  breeze 

That  loves  to  ripple  o'er  the  rivulet 

Will  play  around  thy  brow,  and  the  cool  sound 

Of  running  waters  soothe  thee.     Mark  how  clear 

They  sparkle  o'er  the  shallows;  and  behold, 

Where  o'er  their  surface  wheels   with  restless  speed 

Yon  glossy  insect,  on  the  sand  below 

How  its  swift  shadow  flits.     In  solitude 

The  rivulet  is  pure,  and  trees  and  herbs 

Bend  o'er  its  salutary  course  refreshed ; 

But,  passing  on  amid  the  haunts  of  men, 

It  finds  pollution  there,  and  rolls  from  thence 

A  tainted  stream.     Seek'st  thou  for  Happiness? 

Go,  Stranger,  sojourn  in  the  woodland  cot 

Of  Innocence,  and  thou  shalt  find  her  there. 

But  exercises  though  they  are,  unfinished  frag- 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry  305 

ments,  musings  of  a  young  student  over  his  books, 
they  have  within  them  nevertheless  the  breath  of 
life.  As  one  comes  upon  them  amid  the  general 
feebleness  of  verse  in  "The  North  American  Re 
view/'  the  interminable  translations  of  Boileau's 
satires  into  labored  heroics,  the  hackneyed  transla 
tions  from  Horace,  the  effusions  like  "Hope  and 
Memory"  and  "The  Cyprian  Queen,"  and  the  pom 
pous  ode  in  schoolboy  Latin,  it  is  like  coming  upon 
a  cold  spring  in  the  illimitable  desert.  One  who  ap 
proaches  them,  however,  in  this  setting  will  learn  a 
secret — secret  at  least  to  the  authors  of  text 
books:  the  poems  as  we  have  them  to-day  have 
suffered  change  until  they  are  almost  new  creations. 
To  call  "Thanatopsis"  an  example  of  precocity  is 
foolishness.  The  original  piece  is  a  fragment  echo 
ing  the  spirit  of  Kirke  White's  "Time";  but  the 
later  "Thanatopsis"  is  a  vital  unit.  Its  soul  was 
not  given  it  until  1821  when  the  poet  was  twenty- 
seven.  When  called  upon  to  print  his  poems  after 
his  Harvard  rendition  of  "The  Ages,"  he  molded 
the  fragment  into  a  whole,  expanding  the  original 
forty-seven  lines  into  eighty-one — among  the  ad 
ditions  the  well-known  opening  and  closing  parts, 
the  original  having  opened  with  the  lines 

Yet  a  few  days,  and  thee 
The  all-beholding  sun  shall  see  no  more 

and  closed  with  the  line 


306  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

And  make  their  bed  with  thee, 

changing  the  point  of  view  completely,  and  adding 
everywhere  touches  of  distinction. 

He  had  discovered  a  new  master.  To  Richard 
H.  Dana  he  once  remarked  that  "upon  opening 
Wordsworth,  a  thousand  springs  seemed  to  gush 
up  at  once  in  his  heart,  and  the  face  of  nature,  of 
a  sudden  to  change  into  a  strange  freshness  and 
life."  The  nature  of  the  change  one  may  see  in 
the  additions  and  the  emendations  to  the  original 
draft  of  "Thanatopsis."  The  reflections  upon  the 
universality  of  death  become  no  more  sentimental 
and  puritanic,  as  in  the  case  of  Kirke  White;  they 
become  a  part  of  the  great  voice  of  nature.  Nature 
has  become  a  teacher,  a  comforter,  and  a  religion. 

The  emendations  everywhere  are  significant.  In 
the  original,  for  instance,  the  lines  ran: 

Then  venerable  woods — rivers  that  move 
In  majesty,  and  the  complaining  brooks 
That  wind  among  the  meads  and  make  them  green. 

In   the   final   version    this    was    expanded    to 

Then  venerable  woods — rivers  that  move 
In  majesty,  and  the  complaining  brooks 
That  make  the  meadows  green ;  and,  poured  round  all, 
Old  Ocean's  gray  and  melancholy  waste. 

In  the  orginal  this : 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry  307 
That  veil  Oregan,  where  he  hears  no  sound, 
was  changed  to  the  well-known 
Where  rolls  the  Oregon,  and  hears  no  sound. 

In  the  original  this  : 

Thousands  more 

Will  share  thy  destiny. — The  tittering  world 
Dance  on  to  the  grave.     The  busy  brood  of  care 
Plod  on,  and  each  one  chases  as  before 
His  favorite  phantom. 

In  the  final  version  significant  changes  in  almost 
every  line: 

All  that  breathe 

Will  share  thy  destiny.     The  gay  will  laugh 
When  thou  art  gone,  the  solemn  brood  of  care 
Plod  on,  and  each  one  as  before  will  chase 
His  favorite  phantom. 

The  full  influence  of  Wordsworth  came  later — 
best  seen,  perhaps,  in  "A  Winter  Piece,"  a  poem  that 
without  the  slightest  trace  of  plagiarism  could  not 
have  been  written  by  one  who  had  not  read  Words 
worth's  "Lines  Composed  a  Few  Miles  Above  Tin- 
tern  Abbey."  The  heart  of  Wordsworth's  poem  is 
this: 

How  oft 

In  darkness,  and  amid  the  many  shapes 
Of  joyless  daylight;  when  the  fretful  stir 
Unprofitable,  and  the  fever  of  the  world, 


308  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Have  hung  upon  the  beatings  of  my  heart, 

How  oft,  in  spirit,  have  I  turned  to  thee, 

O  sylvan  Wye!     Thou  wanderer  through  the  woods, 

How  often  has  my  spirit  turned  to  thee! 

And  of  Bryant's  it  is  this  : 

And  when  the  ills  of  life 

Had  chafed  my  spirit — when  the  unsteady  pulse 
Beat  with  strange  flutterings — I  would  wander  forth 
And  seek  the  woods.     Then  sunshine  on  my  path 
Was  to  me  as  a  friend.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  Then  the  chant 

Of  birds,  and  chime  of  brooks,  and  soft  caress 
Of  the  fresh  sylvian  air,  made  me  forget 
The  thoughts  that  broke  my  peace. 

Nature  was  to  both  the  healer,  the  pastor,  the 
soothing  presence  that  brought  again  sanity  and 
joyousness.  Bryant  never  proceeded  beyond  this 
conception  of  nature,  but  Wordsworth,  as  we  shall 
see,  passed  on  into  larger  conceptions  and  so  be 
came  a  poet  immeasurably  larger  and  immeasurably 
more  prophet-like. 

No  man  ever  achieved  poetic  fame  with  less  of 
striving  than  did  Bryant.  The  fragments  of  poetry 
anonymously  published  in  a  scholarly  literary  review 
could  bring  no  immediate  popularity,  but  they  could 
do  what  was  better  for  the  poet :  they  could  draw 
the  attention  of  the  Boston  circle  which  had  in  its 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry   309 

hands  the  best  that  America  could  offer.  The 
praises  of  the  editors — Dana  the  leading  spirit — 
led  the  young  barrister  to  empty  his  first  portfolio. 
"Translation  of  a  Fragment  of  Simonides,"  "To  a 
Waterfowl,"  and  "To  a  Friend  on  His  Marriage" 
appeared  in  the  March,  1818,  number.  For  the 
July  number  he  was  asked  to  review  the  Rev.  Soly- 
man  Brown's  "An  Essay  on  American  Poetry,"  and 
his  response  was  that  careful  essay  which  deserves 
to  be  printed  as  the  general  introduction  to  the  his 
tory  of  nineteenth  century  American  poetry.  Until 
this  day  there  has  been  no  better  study  of  the  literary 
conditions  of  the  early  years  of  the  American  re 
public  : 

English  in  our  origin,  and  owing  to  the  character 
of  our  birthplace,  almost  all  that  we  have  cause  to  be 
proud  of  in  our  natures;  speaking  her  language,  and 
reading  her  literature  with  the  same  commonness  as 
if  it  were  our  own;  boasting  of  her  works  of  genius 
in  the  entire  f  orgetf  ulness  that  they  are  not  ours ;  and 
defending  them  with  the  same  earnestness  of  partiality 
as  if  our  own  reputation  were  at  stake;  we  seem  to 
have  been  unmindful  that  it  was  possible  for  us  to 
have  a  literary  character  at  home  and  writers  of  our 
own  to  read  and  admire.  We  look  to  England  for 
almost  all  our  learning  and  entertainment;  our  met- 
aphysicks  and  morals  are  drawn  from  her;  and  for 
poetry,  the  common  reading  of  all  countries,  we  enter 


310  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

into  the  assembly  of  her  bards  alone.  This  continued 
dependence  upon  England  has  riot  only  turned  us  away 
from  the  observation  of  what  is  well  done  here,  but 
has  begotten  a  distrust  of  our  own  judgment  and 
taste.  We  hesitate  at  pronouncing  an  opinion  on  what 
has  not  received  judgment  there ;  and  dare  not  confess 
where  we  have  been  offended  or  pleased,  lest  her  tribu 
nals  of  criticism  should,  by  and  by,  come  down  upon 
us  and  tell  us  we  are  wrong. 

Warning  his  countrymen  against  all  extravagant 
claims  and  all  extravagant  hopes  of  equaling  the 
great  literatures  of  the  older  nations,  he  neverthe 
less  strikes  up  boldly  for  an  independent  native 
product. 

National  gratitude — national  pride — every  high  and 
generous  feeling  that  attaches  us  to  the  land  of  our 
birth,  or  that  exalts  our  characters  as  individuals,  ask 
us  that  we  should  foster  the  infant  literature  of  our 
country.  .  .  .  The  poetry  of  the  United  States,  though 
it  has  not  yet  reached  that  perfection  to  which  some 
other  countries  have  carried  theirs,  is  yet  even  better 
than  we  could  have  been  expected  to  produce,  consid 
ering  that  our  nation  has  scarcely  seen  two  centuries 
since  the  first  of  its  founders  erected  -their  cabins  on 
its  soil,  that  our  literary  institutions  are  yet  in  their 
infancy,  and  that  our  citizens  are  just  beginning  to 
find  leisure  to  attend  to  intellectual  refinement  and 
indulge  in  intellectual  luxury,  and  the  means  of 
rewarding  intellectual  excellence. 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry   311 

The  flattering  attentions  of  the  leading  American 
review  laid  again  upon  the  young  man  the  old  be 
witching  spell.  He  was  like  the  boy  who  has  re 
nounced  forever  the  object  of  his  early  infatuation 
and  who  suddenly  finds  himself  smiled  upon  by 
her  whom  he  was  supposed  to  have  forgotten.  That 
he  had  given  up  the  study  and  enjoyment  of  poetry 
is  not  for  a  moment  to  be  supposed.  His  essay  "On 
the  Use  of  Trisyllabic  Feet  in  Iambic  Verse"  in  the 
September,  1819,  "Review"  he  called  a  "little  retro 
spect  which  I  have  taken  of  the  usage  of  our  poets 
who  have  written  in  blank  verse,"  and  he  speaks  as 
one  who  has  read  comparatively  all  of  Shakspere 
and  the  older  dramatists,  Milton,  Dryden,  Young, 
Thomson,  Dyer,  Glover,  Cumberland,  Akenside, 
Armstrong,  and  Cowper. 

In  1821  Richard  H.  Dana  had  begun  his  "The 
Idle  Man,"  a  distinctive  little  periodical  written 
wholly  by  its  editor  save  for  the  poems  by  Bryant : 
"Green  River"  in  the  second  issue,  "A  Walk  at 
Sunset"  in  the  third  issue,  and  "Winter  Scenes"  in 
the  fourth.  And  the  same  year  Boston  again 
pushed  him  into  publicity  in  a  way  decidedly  sur 
prising:  he  was  asked  to  deliver  the  annual  poem 
before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  of  Harvard  College — an 
unprecedented  request:  he  of  the  two  terms  in  the 
meager  inland  college  addressing  the  most  critical 
and  academic  body  in  America.  The  theme  that 


312  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

possessed  him  was  the  same  that  had  come  to  the 
young  Freneau  whose  "The  Rising  Glory  of  Amer 
ica"  had  rendered  distinctive  the  Princeton  gradua 
tion  of  1771,  and  to  Barlow  who  dreamed  his  life 
long  over  that  tremendous  conception  which  he 
called  at  first  "The  Vision  of  Columbus."  It  was 
a  peculiarly  American  theme:  the  long  roll  of  the 
ages  culminating  in  the  establishment  in  the  New 
World  of  the  hope  of  all  lands. 

Here  the  free  spirit  of  mankind,  at  length, 
Throws  its  last  fetters  off;  and  who  shall  place 
.     A  limit  to  the  giant's  unchained  strength, 
Or  curb  his  swiftness  in  the  forward  race? 

His  effort  was  successful  to  the  degree  that  a 
printed  edition  was  called  for,  and  in  response  the 
young  poet  put  forth  the  significant  volume  of  1821. 

The  first  book  of  poems  it  was  that  America  with 
out  apology  might  offer  to  the  world;  a  production 
that  any  nation  might  be  proud  to  add  to  its  treas 
ures.  It  contained  the  best  of  all  that  Bryant  was 
destined  to  offer;  all  the  qualities  that  we  associate 
with  his  poetry  were  in  it.  Had  he  died  in  1821, 
America  to-day  would  be  mourning  the  loss  of  a 
poet  as  commanding  as  Wordsworth. 

The  rest  is  told  quickly.  Like  many  another, 
he  who  had  been  "well  pleased"  with  Coke  and  the 
theory  of  the  law  had  become  disgusted  with  the 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry   313 

actual  practice  of  it;  "the  dregs  of  men"  it  forced 
upon  him,  and  all  the  barbarous  j anglings  of  litiga 
tion.  His  swift,  unlooked-for  rise  to  literary  promi 
nence  added  to  his  unrest.  The  break  came  in 
1825:  the  abandoning  of  the  law  and  the  assump 
tion  in  New  York  of  the  editorship  of  a  struggling 
literary  magazine.  The  venture  proved  to  be  a 
losing  one :  the  magazine  failed,  leaving  him  in  the 
somber  mood  described  in  his  poem  "The  Journey 
of  Life."  Then  came  temporary  employment  upon 
the  New  York  "Evening  Post,"  and  finally  in  1829 
the  promotion  to  the  chief  editorship.  During  the 
next  half -century  he  lived  in  the  maelstrom  of  a 
great  city  daily.  Thus  swiftly  the  life  of  Bry 
ant. 


IV 

All  of  the  poet  that  is  distinctive  came  before  the 
end  of  his  first  year  in  New  York.  The  publication 
in  1826  of  the  poem  "I  Cannot  Forget  with  What 
Fervid  Devotion,"  whatever  may  have  been  its  date 
of  composition,  marks  the  end.  Rarely  has  the 
poet  so  disclosed  his  whole  heart. 

I  cannot  forget  with  what  fervid  devotion 

I  worshipped  the  visions  of  verse  and  of  fame; 

Each  gaze  at  the  glories  of  earth,  sky,  and  ocean, 
To  my  kindled  emotions,  was  wind  over  flame. 


314  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

And  deep  were  my  musings  in  life's  early  blossom, 
Mid    the    twilight    of    mountain-groves    wandering 

long; 
How  thrilled  my  young  veins,  and  how  throbbed  my 

full  bosom 
When  o'er  me  descended  the  spirit  of  song! 

'Mong  the  deep-cloven  fells  that  for  ages  had  listened 
To  the  rush  of  the  pebble-paved  river  between, 

Where   the    kingfisher    screamed   and    gray    precipice 

glistened, 
All  breathless  with  awe  have  I  gazed  on  the  scene. 

Till  I  felt  the  dark  power  o'er  my  reveries  stealing, 
From  the  gloom  of  the  thickets  that  over  me  hung, 

And  the  thoughts  that  awoke,  in  the  rapture  of  feeling, 
Were  formed  into  verse  as  they  rose  to  my  tongue. 

Bright   visions!     I   mixed    with    the   world,    and   ye 
faded, 

No  longer  your  pure  rural  worshipper  now ; 
In  the  haunts  your  continual  presence  pervaded, 

Ye  shrink  from  the  signet  of  care  on  my  brow. 

In  the  old  mossy  groves  on  the  breast  of  the  mountain, 
In  deep  lonely  glens  where  the  waters  complain, 

By  the  shade  of  the  rock,  by  the  gush  of  the  fountain, 
I  seek  your  loved  footsteps,  but  seek  them  in  vain. 

Oh,  leave  not  forlorn  and  forever  forsaken, 
Your  pupil  and  victim  to  life  and  its  tears! 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry    315 

But  sometimes  return,  and  in  mercy  awaken 
The  glories  ye  showed  to  his  earlier  years. 

It  was  a  period  of  struggle,  of  abandoning  poetry 
and  returning  to  it  like  a  child  that  runs  away,  but 
at  times  is  filled  with  irresistible  longings  to  return. 
For  the  1826  "Atlantic  Souvenir,"  the  first  of  the 
annuals,  he  sent  a  poem  which  he  called  "Nature," 
a  poem  he  later  put  into  his  collected  edition  without 
a  title  and  without  the  last  stanza.  It  is  another 
document  in  the  period  of  struggle,  another  cry 
from  the  depths  of  his  soul. 

NATURE 


I  broke  the  charm  that  held  me  long, 

The  dear,  dear  witchery  of  song : 

I  said  the  poet's  idle  lore 

Should  waste  my  prime  of  years  no  more ; 

For  poetry,  though  heavenly  born, 

Consorts  with  poverty  and  scorn. 

ii 

I  broke  the  charm,  nor  deemed  its  power 

Could  fetter  me  another  hour; 

Ah,  thoughtless !  how  could  I  forget, 

Its  causes  were  around  me  yet; 

For  wheresoe'er  I  looked,  the  while, 

Was  nature's  everlasting  smile. 


316  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

in 

Still  came,  and  lingered  on  my  sight 

Of  flowers  and  streams  the  bloom  and  light, 

The  story  of  the  stars  and  sun, 

And  these,  and  poetry  are  one : 

They,  ere  the  world  had  fixed  me  long, 

Recalled  me  to  the  love  of  song. 

IV 

Thus  where  the  cliff,  abrupt  and  steep, 
Looks  down  upon  the  sullen  deep, 
Far  from  his  mother's  side,  the  child 
Sat  playing  on  the  verge,  and  smiled : — 
She  laid  her  bosom  bare,  and  won 
From  the  dread  brink  her  truant  son. 

Before  finally  surrendering  himself  to  the  busi 
ness  that  was  to  engulf  him  he  tried  earnestly  the 
door  by  which  Irving  had  escaped.  He  had  come 
to  New  York  to  enter  the  literary  life,  to  become 
a  professional  man  of  letters,  a  creator  of  literature 
and  only  literature.  There  was  no  money  in  poetry 
and  he  turned  to  prose.  Between  1827  and  1832 
he  wrote  no  less  than  thirteen  short  stories.  For 
"The  Talisman,"  which  he  edited,  he  contributed 
"An  Adventure  in  the  East  Indies/'  "The  Cascade 
of  Melsingak,"  "Recollections  df  the  South  of 
Spain,"  "A  Story  of  the  Island  of  Cuba,"  "The 
Indian  Spring,"  "The  Whirlwind,"  "Phanette  des 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry   317 

Gauldmes,"  and  "The  Marriage  Blunder."  For 
"Tales  of  Glauber  Spa"  he  wrote  'The  Skeleton's 
Cave"  and  "Medfield,"  and  for  various  periodicals 
he  wrote  others. 

That  one  who  had  written  poetry  that  is  unde 
niably  of  classic  quality  could  write  tales  so  de 
void  of  art  and  all  that  fiction  demands  is  one  of 
the  unexplainable  things.  His  'The  Marriage 
Blunder,"  for  instance,  begins  with  a  dissertation 
upon  marriage,  tells  at  length  of  a  journey  the  au 
thor  once  made  into  the  Red  River  country,  de 
scribes  with  minuteness  a  man  he  met  there,  and  then 
proceeds  with  a  story  told  him  by  this  stranger. 
The  story  proper  begins  on  the  twelfth  page,  after 
one  third  of  the  total  number  of  words  has  been 
used.  In  his  tale  'The  Whirlwind,"  instead  of 
saying  that  a  Baptist  minister  was  on  his  way  to 
Lexington  to  baptize  some  converts,  he  explains 
that  he  was  going  "to  perform  beside  the  translucent 
streams  and  under  the  venerable  trees  of  that  fine 
region,  those  picturesque  solemnities  of  his  sect,  to 
which  they  love  to  point  as  a  maniform  emblem 
of  purification  from  moral  pollution,  and  of  the  res 
urrection  from  the  death  of  sin  and  the  sleep  of 
the  grave." 

The  poet  Bryant  died  at  length  in  the  city  news 
paper  office.  The  poems  that  insure  him  room 
among  the  poets  are  those  few  desultory  moments 


318  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

before  he  had  lost  his  early  vision,  and  the  world  had 
crowded  in  and  robbed  him.  They  are  only  a  hand 
ful;  they  bulk  not  much  larger  than  Poe's  anthology. 
We  may  venture  to  name  them :  "Thanatopsis," 
"The  Yellow  Violet,"  "Inscription  for  the  Entrance 
to  a  Wood,"  "To  a  Waterfowl,"  "Green  River," 
"A  Winter  Piece,"  "A  Walk  at  Sunset,"  "Hymn  to 
Death,"  "November,"  "A  Forest  Hymn,"  "The 
Death  of  the  Flowers,"  and  "I  Cannot  Forget  with 
What  Fervid  Devotion."  One  more  we  may  add, 
perhaps,  "The  Prairies,"  inspired  by  his  entrance  for 
a  moment  into  a  new  and  fresh  world,  and  there  are 
many  who  would  plead  for  "To  a  Fringed  Gentian" 
and  "The  Journey  of  Life."  The  rest  do  not  greatly 
matter. 


Fragmentary — that  is  the  first  impression.  Genius 
repressed,  deliberately  smothered  out,  a  series  of 
farewells  to  the  muse,  and  brief  returns  as  to  stolen 
pleasure,  then  silence  or  worse  than  silence — the 
voice  of  a  poet  abandoned  of  the  inspiring  presence 
and  unconscious  of  his  loss.  Bryant's  poems  are 
a  miscellany  of  glorious  fragments  with  here  and 
there  a  supreme  lyric.  The  bits  of  blank  verse, 
"A  Forest  Hymn,"  "Hymn  to  Death,"  "A  Winter 
Piece,"  and  the  like,  impress  one  as  fragments 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry   319 

from  a  larger  whole,  wonderfully  finished  columns 
for  a  temple  never  completed,  never  even  planned. 
What  might  have  been  if,  like  Wordsworth,  he 
could  have  given  his  life  entirely  to  poetry,  we  may 
not  ask. 

As  it  is,  he  was  the  scant  blossom  of  New  Eng 
land  puritanism  before  it  was  touched  by  the  trans 
cendental  fertilizer,  the  single  yellow  violet  of  a 
cold  spring: 

Of  all  her  train,  the  hands  of  Spring 
First  plant  thee  in  the  watery  mould, 

And  I  have  seen  thee  blossoming 
Beside  the  snow-bank's  edges  cold. 

It  was  no  native  wild  flower:  an  Old  World 
species  rather,  grown  stately,  prim,  pale  by  trans 
planting  into  new  soil,  old-fashioned,  simple — no 
doubling  and  fringing,  no  flashy  colorings  to  stir 
the  passions.  Puritanism  breathed  from  its  every 
petal,  an  eighteenth  century  puritanism  totally  un 
affected  by  Wesleyanism  despite  all  the  influences 
of  Cowper. 

Only  half-heartedly  was  the  young  poet  a  child 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  He  was  of  the  classic 
ists,  law-bound  as  by  iron,  self-contained,  ret 
icent.  Such  a  one,  with  such  an  ancestry  and  such 
a  schooling,  will  not  let  himself  go,  he  will  do  noth 
ing  in  passion,  he  will  not  bare  his  soul  nor  cry 


320  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

aloud.  No  "native  wood  notes  wild"  for  him :  he 
will  form  himself  upon  the  tradition  of  the  elders. 
Listen  to  him  as  at  twenty- four  he  instructs  his 
fellow-bards :  "We  speak  not  of  a  disposition  to 
emulate  whatever  is  beautiful  and  excellent  in  their 
[the  English  poets]  writings,  still  less  would  we 
be  understood  as  intending  to  censure  that  sort  of 
imitation  which,  exploring  all  the  treasures  of  Eng 
lish  poetry,  culls  from  all  a  diction,  that  shall 
form  a  natural  and  becoming  dress  for  the  con 
ceptions  of  the  writer — this  is  a  course  of  prepara 
tion  which  every  one  ought  to  go  through  before  he 
appears  before  the  public." 

Anything  like  self-revelation  he  shrank  from. 
He  would  not  republish  from  "The  North  American 
Review"  his  really  beautiful  "Lines  to  a  Friend  on 
his  Marriage,"  but  he  could  cherish  as  if  it  were 
gold  the  undistinctive  translation  from  Simonides 
which  had  appeared  in  the  same  number.  He  aimed 
at  the  intellect  of  his  reader,  and  he  leaves  him  cold. 
Like  all  other  New  Englanders,  he  preached  con 
stantly,  but  it  was  with  the  calm,  contemplative  voice 
of  Watts  rather  than  with  the  passion  of  Wesley. 

But  cold  though  he  was,  we  may  not  say  that  the 
emotional  within  him  was  atrophied.  It  is  only  be 
cause  it  was  not  that  he  lives  to-day.  We  make  a 
list  of  the  few  poems  where  for  a  moment  he  for 
got  his  eighteenth  century  manners  and  cried  from 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry   321 

his  heart,  and  as  we  study  them  we  wake  to  the 
realization  that  we  have  duplicated  the  little  list  upon 
which  his  fame  must  depend.  "The  Waterfowl"  is 
a  cry  from  a  soul  deeply  stirred,  and  so  are  "Green 
River"  and  "I  Cannot  Forget,"  and  the  "Death  of 
the  Flowers."  'The  Hymn  to  Death,"  1821,  con 
tains  a  bit  of  unconscious  self-revealing  that  throws 
a  flood  of  light  upon  the  poet.  The  first  two  thirds 
of  it  is  in  the  stately  Bryant  manner,  a  contempla 
tive  treatise  upon  Death,  as  detached  and  as  bril 
liantly  conventional  as  Pope's  "Essay  on  Man,"  a 
cold  argument  just  as  one  argues  upon  politics, 
but  before  the  poet  had  finished,  his  father  died  and 
the  poem  turned  suddenly  into  a  cry  from  a  man's 
soul. 

Alas !     I  little  thought  that  the  stern  power 
Whose  fearful  praise  I  sang,  would  try  me  thus 
Before  the  strain  was  ended.     It  must  cease — 
For  he  is  in  his  grave  who  taught  my  youth 
The  art  of  verse,  and  in  the  bud  of  life 
Offered  me  to  the  muses.     Oh,  cut  off 
Untimely ! 

In  his  treatment  of  nature  he  was  influenced  by 
Wordsworth,  but  not  fundamentally.  In  spirit  he 
was  of  the  eighteenth  century  even  here.  There 
is  little  in  him  of  the  democratic  and  the  social. 
His  is  the  soul  of  a  Wharton  and  a  Logan  who 


322  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

would  retire  to  the  woods  for  their  own  pleasure  and 
profit.  His  ideal  is  the  Puritan  one  of  self-realiza-  ^£ 
tion,  self-improvement,  self -salvation.  He  would  re 
tire  from  the  "haunts  of  men"  as  often  as  possible  to 
repurify  himself,  to  forget  amid  the  beauties  of 
nature  the  misery  of  the  crowd,  to  revive  the  visions 
of  his  boyhood  spent  amid  the  solitudes,  and  to  get 
nearer  to  God  whom,  in  the  jostling  crowd,  he  could 
not  feel.  His  are  the  poems  of  a  solitary  soul 
intent  upon  contemplation  of  the  deeper  problems, 
a  soul  that  escapes  now  and  then  into  the  silences 
for  itself  alone. 

Really  he  was  not  of  the  nineteenth  century  at  all. 
Wordsworth  underwent  the  same  experience  but 
quickly  he  passed  on  into  the  larger  outlook  of  the 
new  century.  To  him  nature  grew  to  have  a  social 
import.  He  looked  upon  it 

Hearing  oftentimes  . . 
The  still,  sad  music  of  humanity. 

Unlike  Bryant  he  could  romanticize  it,  fill  it  with 
transcendental  idealism,  and  even  pantheistic  attri 
butes.  To  Wordsworth  it  became  at  length  but  a 
natural  step  from  nature  as  perceived  by  the  senses 
to  Nature  as  revealed  by  the  kindled  poetic  imagina 
tion,  and  peopled  with  the  creations  of  the  primitive 
poets : 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry  323 

Great  God  !     I  'd  rather  be 
A  pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn; 
So  might  I,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lea, 
Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn, 
Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea ; 
Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn. 

In  other  words,  Wordsworth  was  a  romanticist,  a 
transcendentalist,  a  poet  of  the  new  century,  while 
Bryant  was  an  eighteenth  century  Puritan  who  went 
into  the  solemn  forest  and  mused  alone  upon  life  and 
death  and  God. 

His  real  contribution  to  American  poetry  came 
from  his  personality  rather  than  from  his  message ; 
that  majestic,  solemn  individuality  that  wrought  it 
self  without  effort  mto  all  that  he  did  during  the 
brief  period  of  his  inspiration.  There  is  a  bardic 
ring  to  his  song  that  one  finds  in  no  other  modern 
poet.  Print  his  lines  without  their  verse  form  and 
often  they  might  be  mistaken  for  passages  from 
Ossian.  This  for  instance  from  "A  Walk  at  Sun 
set"  : 

Oh,  sun!  That  o'er  the  western  mountains  now 
goest  down  in  glory !  ever  beautiful  and  blessed  in  thy 
radiance,  whether  thou  colourest  the  eastern  heaven 
and  night  ^mist  cool,  till  the  bright  day-star  vanish,  or 
on  high  climbest.  and  streamest  thy  white  splendours 
from  mid-sky. 


324  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Or  this  from  the  lyric  "Lines  on  Revisiting  the 
Country"  : 

Ay,  flame  thy  fiercest,  sun!  thou  canst  not  wake,  in 
this  pure  air,  the  plague  that  walks  unseen.  The 
maize  leaf  and  the  maple  bough  but  take,  from  thy 
strong  heat,  a  deeper,  glossier  green.  The  mountain 
wind,  that  faints  not  in  thy  ray,  sweeps  the  blue 
streams  of  pestilence  away. 

One  feels  that  the  stanza  would  have  been  more 
Bryant-like  could  he  have  put  it  into  unrimed  chant- 
measure  and  ended  it  with 

Sweeps  away  the  blue  streams  of  pestilence. 

His  blank  verse,  solemn  and  resonant,  like  the 
reverberations  of  organ  tones  down  the  aisles  of  a 
cathedral,  is  one  of  the  glories  of  American  litera 
ture.  He  did  but  little,  but  that  little  is  permanent. 
American  poetry  began  as  the  American  nation 
began,  with  a  tremendous  note  of  seriousness,  with 
a  broadness  of  view  commensurate  with  the  con 
tinent,  with  the  voice  of  primeval  forests  and  bound 
less  prairies,  yea,  even  with  'The  Song  of  the 
Stars"  and  "The  Firmament." 

And  though  he  learned  his  art  of  eighteenth  cen 
tury  England  he  is  nevertheless  our  own ;  last  voice 
of  our  earlier  traditions,  first  voice  of  our  larger 
visions  as  a  new  nation  under  the  sun.  He  used 
the  materials  of  the  western  world;  the  native  water- 


The  Centenary  of  Bryant's  Poetry   325 

fowl,  the  yellow  violet,  the  primitive  forests.  Not 
wholly  in  his  turns  of  phrase  is  he  free  of  Pope  and 
his  century — he  can  call  fishes  "the  scaly  herds" 
and  he  can  advise  Dana  to  change  his  "The 
Dying  Crow"  to  "The  Dying  Raven" — yet  most 
marvelously  is  he  American  if  one  reads  him  in 
comparison  with  his  contemporaries.  He  draws 
his  figures  and  illustrations  from  the  life  about  him. 
Even  in  his  essay  on  "Trisyllabic  Feet,"  in  which 
he  remarks  that  Young  imitated  Pope  to  his  own 
disadvantage,  he  will  use  a  native  comparison :  "It 
was  like  setting  the  Mississippi  to  spout  little  fets 
d'eau  and  turn  children's  watenvheels." 

And  it  was  no  narrowly  localized  America  that 
he  sang;  no  little  provincial  area  glorified,  no  New 
England  insulated  and  made  a  new  England.  The 
freshness  and  broadness  of  the  western  world  are 
in  his  song.  The  first  unquestioned  poet  in  Amer 
ica  was  the  first  ^-American  poet.  Our  literature 
opens  with  a  note  that  is  a  worthy  prelude  to  all 
that  may  be  in  the  centuries  to  come. 

The  influence  of  Bryant  upon  the  New  England 
group  that  arose  in  the  thirties  was  peculiar.  His 
success  as  a  poet  and  the  chaste  beauty  of  his  nature 
lyrics  stimulated  nearly  all  of  them  to  their  first 
efforts,  but  his  distinctive  note  was  echoed  by  few 
of  them.  He  led  them  undoubtedly  to  native 
themes,  but  he  imparted  to  none  his  classic  soul. 


326  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

The  influx  of  transcendentalism  and  of  romanticism 
quickly  overcame  his  influence  and  swallowed  him 
up.  Wordsworth,  Byron,  Shelley,  Keats,  Tenny 
son,  and  the  German  romanticists  ruled  the  mid 
years  of  the  century  until  the  early  pioneer  classicist 
was  forgotten.  His  "Thanatopsis"  and  his  solemn 
contemplations  of  death  may  for  a  time  have  pro 
longed  our  period  of  sadness  and  sentiment,  that 
adolescent  growing  period  in  America;  but  not 
enough  to  be  worth  our  study. 

He  is  a  lone,  cold  peak  on  the  horizon  of  our 
poetry,  grand  and  solemn  in  the  morning  twilight 
of  American  song.  He  did  but  little,  but  that  little 
is  unlike  anything  else  in  the  range  of  our  literature. 
He  is  the  poetic  monument  of  our  early  Puritan 
origins,  the  mark  upon  the  border-line  between  the 
old  passing  order  and  the  new  world  that  was  to  be. 


POE'S  "ULALUME" 

POE  was  preeminently  a  lyrist.  With  a  soul  ab 
normally  sensitive,  with  nerves  that  every  harsh 
note  jangled,  endowed  with  an  intense  longing  for 
human  sympathy,  yet  with  a  nature  that  was  fated 
by  its  very  elements  to  be  misunderstood  at  every 
point,  with  a  pride  that  forbade  explanations,  that 
curled  the  lip  and  suffered  in  silence,  Poe  early 
became  self -centered  and  introspective.  If  a  man 
needed  sympathy  and  help  it  was  he,  yet  he  re 
ceived  none.  With  his  sensitive  physical  nature  an 
indulgence  that  in  another  man  would  have  been  but 
a  slight  misstep  was  with  him  a  fall,  yet  the  world 
made  no  distinctions.  Misunderstood,  out  of  touch 
with  normal  humanity,  he  became  bitter.  He  found 
no  companionship  save  his  own  soul,  no  food  save 
his  own  heart,  and  this  rendered  morbid  his 
thoughts,  distorted  his  perspective,  and  made  ab 
normal  all  his  standards  of  measure.  Like  Byron, 
he  projected  himself  into  all  that  he  did.  At  length 
it  became  impossible  for  him  to  look  at  life  objec 
tively.  He  must  be  the  hero  of  his  stories ;  he  must 

use  no  scenery,  no  atmosphere  save  that  found  in 

327 


328  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

his  own  soul.  If  he  sang,  it  must  be  a  bitter  song 
about  his  own  bitter  life.  Even  his  dramatic  frag 
ments  are  lyrics.  To  him  any  poetry  save  the  short 
impassioned  lyric,  which  owing  to  its  very  intensity 
must  be  brief,  was  impossible.  In  his  ''Poetic 
Principle,"  he  contended  that  even  "Paradise  Lost" 
was  but  aa  series  of  lyrics/' 

With  this  conception  of  the  nature  of  poetry,  Poe, 
who,  whatever  else  he  might  have  been,  was  a  con 
sistent  artist,  took  up  the  lyre  only  in  moments  of 
passion ;  and  that  these  moments  came  but  seldom  is 
shown  by  the  scantiness  of  his  lyrical  product.  Few 
poets  have  won  commanding  place  with  so  small  a 
margin  of  actual  accomplishment.  Poe's  whole  po 
etic  product  makes  but  a  thin  volume,  and  if  from  it 
we  remove  those  poems  which  almost  alone  estab 
lish  his  fame,  we  shall  reduce  it  to  a  dozen  pages. 
Poe  walks  among  the  great  lyrists  of  the  world  by 
virtue  of  not  more  than  ten  lyrics.  Roughly  in  the 
order  of  their  production  these  lyrics  are  "The 
Sleeper,"  "The  City  in  the  Sea,"  "Israfel,"  "The 
Haunted  Palace,"  "The  Conqueror  Worm,"  "The 
Raven,"  "Ulalume,"  "The  Bells,"  "For  Annie,"  and 
"Annabel  Lee."  But  even  with  a  list  as  small  as 
this  Poe  is  secure  in  his  fame.  There  is  an  atmos 
phere  about  these  lyrics  that  is  wholly  undefinable; 
a  weird  music  that  is  half  unearthly;  a  mysterious 
force  that  is  all  but  irresistible.  They  seize  upon 


Poes  "Ulcdume"  329 

the  imagination  of  the  reader  and  bear  it  into  the 
regions  that  only  the  imagination  may  tread,  through 
strange  lands  with  names  from  the  realms  beyond 
Xanadu,  they  harrow  him  with  exotic  cadences,  they 
chill  him  with  a  fear  of  he  knows  not  what,  and 
everywhere  they  follow  him  with  that  low,  wild 
music  that  suggests  the  accompaniments  of  Eastern 
necromancy. 

The  most  spontaneous  of  all  his  lyrics,  the  one 
that  flashes  its  light  into  the  greatest  number  of 
chambers  in  the  poet's  soul,  is  "Ulalume,"  perhaps 
the  least  understood  of  all  Poe's  writings.  The 
average  reader  gets  from  it  very  little  save  a  strange 
melancholy  music  and  a  sense  of  the  terrible  that 
he  finds  difficult  to  explain.  To  some  it  has  seemed 
humorous.  Willis,  its  first  critic,  classed  it  as  '^a 
curiosity  in  philologic  flavor."  To  him  it  was  sim- 
pTy1T"skilful  exercise  of  rarity  and  niceness  of  lan- 
guage."  To  some  critics  it  has  seemed  but  the  wild 
vagaries  of  an  insane  master  poet,  to  others  a  fanci 
ful  elegy  for  an  idolized  wife,  to  others  it  has 
been  inexplicable.  Not  long  ago  a  university  lec 
turer,  after  dwelling  upon  the  nameless  atmosphere 
and  the  unearthly  music  of  the  poem,  declared  as 
his  opinion  that  no  one  would  ever  be  able  to  dis 
cover  what  the  poet  had  really  meant.  He  doubted 
if  Poe  had  known  himself  what  he  meant.  It  is 
very  sure  that  without  the  life  of  the  poet  as  a 


330  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

commentary  "Ulalume"  is  a  hopeless  enigma.  Read 
after  a  careful  study  of  the  circumstances  that  cre 
ated  it,  however,  it  becomes  clear,  and,  what  is  more, 
it  throws  light  upon  the  poet's  inner  life.  "Ula 
lume"  is  not  an  elegy ;  it  is  not  a  threnody  for  a  lost 
wife  or  an  etherealized  Lenore;  it  is  not  a  display 
of  mere  verbal  dexterity;  it  is  not  the  incoherence 
of  an  insane  master — it  is  an  honest  lyric  that  leads 
us  to  a  man's  heart ;  'it  is  a  cry  of  utter  despair  from 
a  man's  inmost  souK 

Poe  wrote  this  poem  in  the  autumn  of  1847,  a* 
the  lowest  ebb  of  his  career.  One  year  earlier,  in 
the  autumn  of  1846,  he  had  found  the  limit  of  his 
physical  powers.  Constant  overwork  and  unre 
lieved  mental  strain  had  combined  with  dissipation 
to  reduce  him  to  a  state  bordering  upon  collapse. 
His  brain  refused  to  obey  him;  it  became  impos 
sible  for  him  to  work,  and  upon  him  depended  the 
support  of  a  sick  wife  and  her  mother.  During 
the  late  autumn  and  early  winter  of  1846-47  this 
little  family  suffered  all  the  extremes  of  poverty. 
Unable  to  furnish  sufficient  fire,  or  covering,  or  food, 
Poe  saw  his  wife,  who  needed  the  most  delicate  care, 
in  wanfcof  the  bare  necessities  of  life,  and  sinking 
daily  lower  and  lower.  The  well-known  descrip 
tion  of  this  home,  written  by  Mrs.  Gove,  who  late 
in  January  happened  to  discover  the  perishing  fam 
ily,  is  one  of  the  most  pathetic  in  our  literary  annals : 


Foe's  "Ulalume"  331 

There  was  no  clothing  on  the  bed,  which  was  only 
straw.  .  .  .  The  weather  was  cold  and  the  sick  lady 
had.  the  dreadful  chills  that  accompany  the  hectic 
fever  of  consumption.  She  lay  on  the  straw  bed, 
wrapped  in  her  husband's  greatcoat  with  a  large 
tortoiseshell  cat  in  her  bosom.  .  .  .  The  coat  and  the 
cat  were  the  sufferer's  only  means  of  warmth  except 
as  her  husband  held  her  hands  and  her  mother  her 
feet. 

The  end  came  January  30,  and  Poe,  after  follow 
ing  on  foot  the  coffin  to  the  grave,  sank  in  almost 
total  collapse.  "I  did  not  feel  much  hope/'  writes 
Mrs.  Shew,  his  nurse,  who  was  also  a  physician, 
"that  he  could  be  raised  up  from  brain  fever, 
brought  on  by  extreme  suffering  of  mind  and  body 
— actual  want  and  hunger  and  cold  having  been 
borne  by  this  heroic  husband  in  order  to  supply 
food,  medicine,  and  comforts  to  his  dying  wife, 
until  exhaustion  and  lifelessness  were  so  near  at 
every  reaction  of  the  fever  that  even  sedatives  had 
to  be  administered  with  extreme  caution." 

Poe  rallied  from  this  first  fever  only  to  suffer  in 
March  a  relapse  which  for  weeks  threatened  his 
life.  The  summer  and  autumn  of  1847  were  a 
period  of  slow  convalescence.  He  had  been  near 
to  death,  and  near  to  insanity.  The  extremely  sen 
sitive  organism  had  been  so  rudely  shaken  that  never 
again  was  it  to  be  in  adjustment.  At  first  a  great 


332  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

horror,  a  darkness,  and  utter  despair  had  settled 
over  him,  but  little  by  little  he  began  to  lay  hold  on 
the  threads  of  life.  At  length  he  could  even  hope 
for  brighter  days.  Though  shattered  in  body  and 
nerve  and  mind,  he  began  to  plan  a  great  prose 
poem,  "Eureka,"  which  was  to  be  the  crowning 
effort  of  his  life.  The  sympathy  and  help  of  Mrs. 
Shew,  who  with  his  mother  had  snatched  him  from 
death,  began  to  arouse  in  him  the  pale,  uncertain 
vision  of  a  new  life  of  love  and  hope.  But  such 
dreams  were  only  for  intervals.  His  old  past,  with 
its  horrors,  confronted  him  at  every  step.  It  ruled 
him  like  a  demon  and  drove  him  powerless  into 
despair.  Poe  lived  two  and  a  half  years  after 
the  death  of  his  wife,  and  during  it  all  his  life  was 
an  alternation  between  brief  and  feverish  intervals 
of  hope,  and  long  periods  of  half-insane  delirium, 
of  blackness,  and  despair.  He  yearned  with  all 
the  power  of  his  nature  for  sympathy.  "Unless 
some  true  and  tender  and  pure  womanly  love  saves 
me,"  he  wrote  to  Mrs.  Shew  only  a  year  before 
the  final  tragedy  at  Baltimore,  "I  shall  hardly  last 
a  year  longer  alive."  All  those  half-insane  love- 
episodes  of  this  period  of  Poe's  life  were  but  results 
of  this  eager  longing  for  some  one  who  could  under 
stand,  some  one  who  could  rescue  him  from  his  past 
that  was  hurrying  him  on. 

With  this  chapter  of  Poe's  life  understood,  "Ula- 


Foe's  "Ulalume"  333 

lume"  becomes  at  once  clear.  It  was  written  at  the 
close  of  Foe's  year  of  horrors — the  October  of  his 
"most  immemorial  year'' — immemorial  since  it 
seemed  to  drag  its  horrible  length  back  to  the  utmost 
bounds  of  his  memory,  and  since  it  lay  as  a  vague, 
half -forgotten  dream.  The  poem,  like  "The 
Raven,"  "The  Haunted  Palace,"  and  others,  is  an 
allegory,  though  not  all  of  its  imagery  is  symbolic. 
The  poet  no  longer  lives  in  the  old  familiar  world. 
He  has  entered  a  "misty  mid  region"  that  is  not  life, 
that  is  not  death — a  ghoul-haunted  forest  of  cypress, 
a  region  of  unrelieved  horror  and  blackness.  His 
heart  is  hot  and  volcanic ;  it  is  like  a  sulphurous  cur 
rent  of  lava  hissing  and  groaning  through  an  Arctic 
waste  of  death.  He  is  alone ;  he  has  no  companion, 
no  confidant,  save  his  own  soul ;  he  is  driven  to 
commune  with  himself.  But  his  active  brain  has 
become  sluggish  and  palsied,  and  at  times  he  for 
gets  his  awful  surroundings.  It  even  seems  at  times 
as  if  there  was  to  be  a  morning;  to  his  palsied  con 
sciousness  there  appears  a  hint  of  dawn.  A  pale 
nebulous  light  appears  in  the  east.  It  is  like  the 
rising  of  a  new  hope ;  it  is  a  goddess  who  has  seen 
his  tears  and  has  understood  the  torment,  the  never- 
dying  worm  in  his  soul,  who,  despite  the  horror 
which  surrounds  him,  has  dared  to  come  to  him, 
and  to  look  upon  him  "with  love  in  her  luminous 
eyes,"  who  wrill  lead  him  by  the  hand  from  the 


334  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

horrors  in  which  he  is  powerless  into  the  path  to 
the  skies.  The  lines  quiver  and  throb  with  passion. 
Oh,  the  ecstasy  of  being  at  last  understood,  of  being 
in  contact  with  one  who  could  know  and  sympathize ! 
Was  it  Mrs.  Shew  who  first  gave  Poe  this  vision 
of  a  new  hope?  If  one  reads  the  poem  "To  L.  M. 
S. ,"  the  first  recorded  word  of  Poe  after  his  es 
cape  from  death,  and  "To ,"  "Not  long  ago  the 

writer  of  these  lines" — written  to  Mrs.  Shew  just 
after  "Ulalume" — and  then  reads  the  despairing  let 
ter  of  June,  1848,  he  will  find  it  hard  to  believe  it 

otherwise.     In  "To "  he  clearly  asserts  that  it 

is  Mrs.  Shew  whom  he  sees  at  the  end  of  the  cypress 
vista: 

Alas,  I  cannot  feel ;  for  't  is  not  feeling, 
This  standing  motionless  upon  the  golden 
Threshold  of  the  wide-open  gate  of  dreams, 
Gazing  entranced  adown  the  gorgeous  vista, 
And  thrilling  as  I  see,  upon  the  right, 
Upon  the  left,  and  all  the  way  along, 
Amid  empurpled  vapors,  far  away, 
To  where  the  prospect  terminates — thee  only. 

But  the  world  of  despair  rushes  quickly  back 
upon  his  soul.  A  moment  of  ecstasy  and  then  his 
sluggish  brain  remembers.  This  pale  star,  too  pale 
to  be  real,  is  sent  but  to  increase  his  torment.  It 
is  the  work  of  ghouls,  a  thing  of  horror,  to  shudder 


Poe's  "Ulalume"  335 

at  and  to  fear.  In  an  agony  of  revulsion  of  feeling 
his  soul  sinks  into  the  dust.  But  his  wavering, 
palsied  brain  cannot  long  be  constant  either  to  hope 
or  despair.  Again  the  vision  beckons  him  up 
ward;  hope  and  joy  and  beauty  seem  about  to  bloom 
once  more  in  his  blackened  life.  Eagerly  he  fol 
lows  the  pale  star  which  is  so  full  of  hope  and 
beauty  and  which  "flickers  up  to  heaven  through 
the  night,"  but  he  is  "stopped  by  the  door  of  a 
tomb."  The  star  is  but  a  phantom,  the  work  of  a 
demon  who  knows  how  to  make  his  hell  complete; 
after  every  struggle  he  is  thrown  back  helpless  upon 
his  own  blasted  soul.  Mrs.  Shew  respected  him, 
pitied  him,  admired  him,  but  she  did  not  love  him. 
Her  answer  was  final.  There  is  no  escape.  Fate 
has  taken  every  precaution  "to  bar  up  the  way  and 
to  ban  it";  he  is  alone  with  his  dead  in  the  ghoul- 
haunted  cypress,  and  all  visions  of  hope  are  but 
to  mock  and  torment  him. 

This,  then,  is  the  meaning  of  "Ulalume."  It  is 
a  sob  from  the  depths  of  blank  despair;  it  is  the 
most  pathetic  poem  in  American  literature.  Every 
thing  about  it  attests  its  genuineness.  It  is  not  fin 
ished;  it  is  a  spontaneous  outpouring  of  feeling, 
unpolished,  unrevised.  Such  work  was  uncommon 
with  Poe,  who  labored  over  his  lyrics  sometimes  for 
years.  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the  account 
of  the  composition  of  "The  Raven"  is  largely  true. 


336  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

The  more  spontaneous  the  song  the  nearer  we  get 
to  the  heart  of  the  singer.  From  the  mechanical 
point  of  view  "Ulalume"  is  the  most  unfinished  of 
the  poet's  productions.  Its  monotony  of  expres 
sion;  its  snail  pace;  its  frequent  discords;  its  cock 
ney  rimes;  its  abundance  of  pleonasm  are  positive 
blemishes,  and  yet  they  increase  the  value  of  the 
poem  as  a  human  document.  Perhaps  the  most  not 
able  "peculiarity,  not  to  say  defect,  of  "Ulalume"  is 
its  repetition.  Yet  this  is  significant.  It  shows  that 
the  poet's  mind  was  almost  in  a  state  of  collapse. 
It  worked  feebly.  An  idea,  when  it  came,  was  hov 
ered  over  and  repeated  with  slight  change  until  an 
other  idea  came  to  reinforce  it. 

That  the  poem  is  the  work  of  an  abnormal  mind 
is  stamped  everywhere  upon  it.  For  the  poet  to 
imagine  two  personalities  within  himself,  which 
held  converse  with  each  other,  which  strenghtened 
and  fortified  each  other,  is  in  itself  a  symptom  of 
insanity.  It  is  this  strange  separation  of  the  poet 
into  two  personalities  that  is  the  chief  source  of 
ambiguity  in  the  poem.  At  every  point  the  poem 
seems  remote  from  ordinary  human  experience.  Its 
geography  is  not  of  this  world;  its  proper  names, 
"Auber"  and  "Yaanek,"  belong  to  another  planet: 
its  atmosphere  is  that  of  ghoul-land,  of  the  "misty 
mid  region"  that  no  man  has  ever  actually  known. 
Its  haunting  music  comes  from  its  abundant  allitera- 


Poe's  "Ulalume"  337 

tion  and  rime,  but  more  from  its  abnormal  repetend, 
which  we  have  shown  to  be  a  symptom  of  intellec 
tual  disease. 

It  was  Poe's  fate  to  be  misunderstood.  His  own 
generation  looked  only  at  his  external  life.  He  was 
marvelously  gifted,  they  said,  but  he  was  an  unholy 
thing,  a  demoniac  from  the  tombs,  who  tore  himself 
upon  the  rocks  and  whom  no  man  might  bind,  a  vic 
tim  of  vices  and  passions.  They  made  no  excuse  for 
him,  they  tried  to  cover  none  of  his  defects,  they 
sought  for  none  of  the  hidden  fountains  of  his  life. 
The  present  judges  him  more  kindly,  but  even  now 
it  is  not  fully  understood  what  manner  of  man  he 
really  was.  No  one  can  study  to  its  heart  a  lyric 
like  "Ulalume"  and  not  feel  the  pathos  that  lay  in 
its  creator's  soul.  The  fatal  gift  of  genius  sepa 
rated  him  from  his  fellow-men,  deprived  him  of 
human  sympathy,  and  drove  him  for  companionship 
to  live  a  hermit  with  his  own  soul.  What  wonder 
that  his  perspective  became  distorted,  that  he  be 
came  morbid  and  unnatural,  the  companion  of 
strange  fancies?  What  utter  pathos  in  his  bitter 
cry  for  help :  "For  months  I  have  known  that  you 
were  deserting  me,  not  willingly,  but  none  the  less 
surely — my  destiny — 

Disaster,  following  fast  and  following  faster,  till  his 
song  one  burden  bore — 


338  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

Till  the  dirges  of  his  Hope  that  melancholy  burden 
bore — 

Of  'Never — nevermore.'  " 

"Ulalume"  is  the  epitome  of  Poe's  last  years.  It 
is  the  picture  of  a  soul  hovering  between  hope  and 
inevitable  despair,  a  soul  longing  passionately  for 
a  sympathy  which  it  can  never  have,  a  soul  strug 
gling  toward  the  light  yet  beaten  back  at  every 
point,  a  soul  that  realized  as  few  other  souls  ever 
have  the  supernal  beauty  which  is  possible  in  human 
life,  yet  condemned  like  Tantalus  never  to  share 
its  joys. 

ULALUME 

The  skies  they  were  ashen  and  sober; 

The  leaves  they  were  crisped  and  sere. — 

The    leaves    they    were    withering    and    sere: 
It  was  night  in  the  lonesome  October 

Of  my  most  immemorial  year : 
It  was  hard  by  the  dim  lake  of  Auber, 

In  the  misty  mid  region  of  Weir 
It  was  down  by  the  dank  tarn  of  Auber, 

In  the  ghoul-haunted  woodland  of  Weir. 

Here  once,  through  an  alley  Titanic, 
Of  cypress,  I  roamed  with  my  Soul — 
Of  cypress,  with  Psyche,  my  Soul. 

These  were  days  when  my  heart  was  volcanic 
As  the  scoriae  rivers  that  roll — 


Poe's  "Ulalume"  339 

As  the  lavas  that  restlessly  roll — 
Their  sulphurous  currents  down  Yaanek 

In  the  ultimate  climes  of  the  pole — 
That  groan  as  they  roll  down  Mount 
Yaanek 

In  the  realms  of  the  Boreal  Pole. 

Our  talk  had  been  serious  and  sober, 

But  our  thoughts  they  were  palsied  and 
sere — 

Our  memories  were  treacherous  and  sere — 
For  we  knew  not  the  month  was  October, 

And  we  marked  not  the  night  of  the  year. 

(Ah,  night  of  all  nights  in  the  year!) 
We  noted  not  the  dim  lake  of  Auber 

(Though  once  we  had  journeyed  down 

here)  — 
Remembered  not  the  dank  tarn  of  Auber, 

Nor  the  ghoul-haunted  woodland  of  Weir. 

And  now,  as  the  night  was  senescent 

And  star-dials  pointed  to  morn — 

As  the  star-dials  hinted  of  morn — 
At  the  end  of  our  path  a  liquescent 

And  nebulous  luster  was  born, 
Out  of  which  a  miraculous  crescent 

Arose,  with  a  duplicate  horn — 
Astarte's  bediamonded  crescent 

Distinct  with  its  duplicate  horn. 

And  I  said:     "She  is  warmer  than  Dian; 
She  rolls  through  an  ether  of  sighs — 


340  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

She  revels  in  a  region  of  sighs. 
She  has  seen  that  the  tears  are  not  dry  on 
These  cheeks,  where  the  worm  never  dies, 
And  has  come  past  the  stars  of  the  Lion, 

To  point  us  the  path  to  the  skies — 

To  the  Lethean  peace  of  the  skies — 
Come  up,  in  despite  of  the  Lion, 

To  shine  on  us  with  her  bright  eyes: 
Come  up  through  the  lair  of  the  Lion, 

With  love  in  her  luminous  eyes." 

But  Psyche,  uplifting  her  finger, 

Said :     "Sadly  this  star  I  mistrust— 
Her  pallor  I  strangely  mistrust : 

Ah,  hasten! — ah,  let  us  not  linger! 
Ah,  fly! — let  us  fly! — for  we  must." 

In  terror  she  spoke,  letting  sink  her 
Wings  until  they  trailed  in  the  dust. — 

In  agony  sobbed,  letting  sink  her 

Plumes  till  they  trailed  in  the  dust — 
Till  they  sorrowfully  trailed  in  the  dust. 

I  replied :     "This  is  nothing  but  dreaming : 
Let  us  on  by  this  tremulous  light! 
Let  us  bathe  in  this  crystalline  light! 

Its  Sibyllic  splendor  is  beaming 

With  hope  and  in  Beauty  to-night: — 
See !— it  flickers  up  the  sky  through  the 
night ! 

Ah,  we  safely  may  trust  to  its  gleaming, 
And  be  sure  it  will  lead  us  aright — 


Foe's  "Ulalume"  341 

We  safely  may  trust  to  a  gleaming, 
That  cannot  but  guide  us  aright, 
Since  it  flickers  up  to  Heaven  through 
the  night." 

Thus  I  pacified  Psyche  and  kissed  her, 
And  tempted  her  out  of  her  gloom — 
And  conquered  her  scruples  and  gloom; 

And  we  passed  to  the  end  of  the  vista, 

But  were  stopped  by  the  door  of  a  tomb — 
By  the  door  of  a  legended  tomb; 

And  I  said :     "What  is  written,  sweet  sister, 
On  the  door  of  this  legended  tomb?" 
She  replied  :     "Ulalume — Ulalume ! — 
Tis  the  vault  of  thy  lost  Ulalume !" 

Then  my  heart  it  grew  ashen  and  sober 
As  the  leaves  that  were  crisped  and  sere — 
As  the  leaves  that  were  withering  and  sere ; 

And  I  cried:     "It  was  surely  October 
On  this  very  night  of  last  year 
That  I  journeyed — I  journeyed  down  here — 
That  I  brought  a  dread  burden  down  here, — 
On  this  night  of  all  nights  in  the  year, 
Ah,  what  demon  hath  tempted  me  here? 

Well  I  know,  now,  this  dim  lake  of  Auber — 
This  misty  mid  region  of  Weir: 

Well  I  know,  now,  this  dank  tarn  of  Auber, 
This  ghoul-haunted  woodland  of  Weir." 

Said  we,  then — the  two,  then:     "Ah,  can  it 
Have  been  that  the  woodlandish  ghouls — 


342  Side-Lights  on  American  Literature 

The  pitiful,  the  merciful  ghouls — 
To  bar  up  our  way  and  to  ban  it 

From  the  secret  that  lies  in  these  wolds — 

From  the  thing  that  lies  hidden  in  these 

wolds — 
Have  drawn  up  the  spector  of  a  planet 

From  the  limbo  of  lunary  souls — 
This  sinfully  scintillant  planet 

From  the  Hell  of  the  planetary  souls?" 


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